Constantin Levaditi (1 August 1874 – 5 September 1953) was a Romanian physician and microbiologist, a major figure in virology and immunology, especially in the study of poliomyelitis and syphilis.
[3]: 872 The researcher Pierre Lépine [fr] (1901–1987) reported that Spyridon Livaditis was a member of the Filiki Eteria (Society of Friends), established to organize the Greek Revolution of 1821 against the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Prince Alexander Ypsilantis.
After the untimely death of his parents in 1883, Constantin’s aunt Efrosini, a member of his father’s family, took custody and he continued his basic education in Bucharest.
His medical studies completed, Levaditi, an intern at the hospital, left it to his colleagues to make the ward rounds and spent his entire days in the laboratory.
His choice is made: if he will remain sentimentally attached to his native Romania, it is France that has become his homeland because he has found there not only the means to work, but the intellectual atmosphere and the spiritual climate where he will be able to realize.
[1]: 2 The work of C. Levaditi is immense: it extends over more than half a century and it touches on apparently separate domains, but in reality they are united by the logical chain of thought and the development of research.
He and Auguste-Charles Marie traced T. pallidum in the brainstem of patients suffering from neurosyphilis, a discovery that confirmed the infiltrating capacity of the organism and opened up new horizons for experimental study in animals.
The two pioneer researchers also made the very significant observation that not only the antigens of T. pallidum, but also extracts of normal tissues from patients who had been infected by syphilis, gave a positive complement fixation reaction.
He cooperated with the Austrian Karl Landsteiner who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930 and who was considered a very important modern immunologist, known for the discovery of the ABO and Rhesus blood group system.
He expanded on these studies during a poliomyelitis outbreak in Sweden (in 1913),[5] working with Scandinavian researchers (among them Karl Oskar Medin); he was able to isolate the poliovirus on tissue explant and made precious observations on its characteristics.
Apart from these major subjects, Levaditi touched on all branches of microbiology: tuberculosis, protozooses, immunology, each time with success, always with virtuosity, often as an innovator as in the study of toxoplasmosis or during the discovery of Streptobacillus moniliformis, agent of murine polyarthritis and epidemic erythema multiforme in humans.
According to the historian John Paul, ‘there was scarcely a microbiological laboratory in Europe that did not boast of at least one worker who had been trained in Paris by Levaditi.’[7]: 290 Levaditi spent almost his entire career at the Pasteur Institute.
In the words of his colleague John Paul, ‘it was a pity that he did not live two more years to witness the conquest of poliomyelitis achieved through the science of which he had so long been a champion, namely immunology’.
Ectodermoses neurotropes, neuroprotozooses, syphilis, chimiothérapie et chimioprévention, phagocytose, immunité, érythème polymorphe, rhumatisme, ergostérol irradié (Paris, 1931); and Titres et travaux.