Yersin, Alexandre émile Jean

Related Category: Medicine: Biographies

(älĕksäN´drə āmēl´ zhän yĕrsăN´), 1863–1943, French bacteriologist, of Swiss descent. He studied with Pasteur and worked on diphtheria antitoxin with P. P. E. Roux at the Pasteur Institute, Paris. Yersin discovered (1894) the bacillus of bubonic plague (independently of Shibasaburo Kitasato) and prepared a serum to combat the disease. He was director of the Pasteur Institute at Nhatrang (SE Annam) and inspector general of the Pasteur Institutes at Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), at Hanoi, and at Dalat (S of Nhatrang).