Charles Richet

Charles Robert Richet (1850-1935) was a French physiologist who spent much of his career at the College de France and became a founding figure of modern immunology. Working with colleague Paul Portier, he investigated toxins drawn from sea creatures such as the Portuguese man o' war. During a 1901 research voyage aboard Prince Albert I of Monaco's yacht, the two men extracted these toxins and injected them into dogs; when the same animals were re-injected weeks later they suffered a sudden, sometimes fatal, reaction instead of developing immunity. Richet coined the term "anaphylaxis" in 1902 to describe this unexpected hypersensitivity, work that became foundational to the modern understanding of allergic reaction and immune hypersensitivity. He received the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of this discovery. Richet's interests ranged beyond physiology into psychical research and eugenics; he presided over the French Eugenics Society from 1920 to 1926.