Adolf Hempt

Who was Adolf Hempt?

Dr. Adolf Hempt is the founder of the Pasteur Institute in Novi Sad, Serbia. He stabilized Pasteur's vaccine against rabies so that it could be distributed to distant places. His method of producing vaccines were used in all Central European countries, and vaccine against rabies was produced according to his technology until 1989.

Hempt was born on the 21st of September 1874 in Novi Sad as son of a Belgian Protestant missionary and Katarina Tewely origination from Budapest. The family soon moved to Sarajevo where he finished his primary studies. As the family was not enough wealthy for paying his studies he started studying medicine in Graz and Munich as military medic. Earned his medical diploma on the University of Graz in 1898. As an aspirant medic he started working in the same year in Vienna in the First Garrison Hospital. After that he was moved to a cavalry garrison next to Vienna. During this he married Maria Winkler in 1903. His first son was born also here in 1904. After demobilization they moved to Lukavac, where ha worked as a doctor. In Bosnia he gained experience in trying to heal different diseases including rabies. In that time Pasteur Institutes were established in Belgrade, Budapest and Niš, but most of the people were not traveling to these cities, and the existing vaccination was not transportable. During World War I he was a commander of a hospital in Trieste. After that he worked in Bosnia, and in 1921 he returned to Novi Sad accepting the invitation of the Serbian Minister of Health Andrija Štampar. Here he founded a Pasteur Institute and became the first director of the same. The institute was producing Pasteur's vaccine against rabies, and provided information to the people about prevention.