Calmette, Albert (1863-1933), was a French bacteriologist who developed a vaccine against tuberculosis with his colleague Camille Guerin. This vaccine is known as the bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG. Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that mainly affects the lungs but can also involve other organs and the bones.
Albert Leon Charles Calmette was born on July 12, 1863, in Nice, France. He graduated in medicine in Paris in 1886, where he was a student of the scientist Louis Pasteur (see Pasteur, Louis ). In 1891, Calmette founded the Pasteur Institute (a center for the study, prevention, and treatment of disease) in Saigon in French Indochina (now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam). It was the first Pasteur Institute outside France. In Saigon, he discovered a serum to treat snake bites. He returned to France in 1895 and founded the Pasteur Institute at Lille, which he directed from 1896 to 1919.
At Lille, Calmette worked in collaboration with Guerin. In 1908, they discovered a way of weakening the bacteria that cause tuberculosis in cattle. The two scientists used this strain of bacteria to make BCG, which was developed in France in 1921 to vaccinate children against tuberculosis. The vaccination was not adopted in the United States or the United Kingdom until the 1950’s, after Calmette’s death. Calmette also developed a test, known as Calmette’s reaction, to diagnose tuberculosis. He died in Paris on Oct. 29, 1933.
See also BCG ; Tuberculosis .
