Jewish Biography: Waldemar Haffkine, Discoverer of the Cholera and Plague Vaccines

September 1, 2025

By Alex Gordon

Alex Gordon, Ph.D

Waldemar Haffkine (Photo: Wikipedia)

HAIFA, Israel — Vladimir Khavkin (Waldemar Haffkine, in his later years Mordecai-Wolff), an outstanding Russian and French bacteriologist, immunologist, and epidemiologist, was born on March 15, 1860, in Odessa, into a family of a teacher at a government Jewish school and his wife, the daughter of a Hebrew teacher who worked at the same school.

He studied in a cheder, and in 1879 he graduated from a gymnasium in Berdyansk. In 1884, he graduated from the Imperial Novorossiysk University in Odessa (Doctor of Science), where his teacher was Ilya Mechnikov, a Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology and Medicine (1908), whose mother was Jewish.

During his student years, Haffkine joined a circle of revolutionary Narodniks (Naród is the Russian word for people, nation), for which he was expelled from the university twice and subjected to arrests. However, after the Narodniks turned to terrorism, he abandoned political activity. In 1881, during the Jewish pogrom in Odessa, while participating in Jewish self-defense, Haffkine was wounded.

As a Jew, Haffkine did not have the opportunity to conduct scientific research in Russia. The university administration, eager to pave the way for the talented student’s scientific career, offered an opportunity for Haffkine to convert to Orthodoxy. However, Haffkine declined this offer. Deprived of the right to a professorship as a Jew, Haffkine was granted permission to emigrate to Switzerland in 1888 and began working at the University of Geneva as an associate professor of physiology.

In 1889, he joined Mechnikov and Louis Pasteur in Paris at the newly established Pasteur Institute, where he took the only available position as librarian. In Lausanne, Haffkine took the position of privat-docent at the local university. The main focus of his work was the protection of the human body from infectious diseases using serums and vaccines. By 1892, Haffkine had created the first effective vaccine against cholera, proving its safety for humans on himself.

At that time, medicine was powerless against cholera. The British government allowed the use of Haffkine’s vaccine in India, where a cholera epidemic was raging, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. In 1893, Haffkine established the production of the cholera vaccine and participated in the vaccination of over 42,000 people. As a result, cholera mortality decreased by tens of times.

In 1896, a plague epidemic broke out in Bombay and its surroundings. Haffkine quickly created the first effective plague vaccine, once again proving its safety first on himself, and then for several years directly participated in vaccinating the population. The small anti-plague laboratory created by Haffkine in Bombay later became the largest research center in South and Southeast Asia for bacteriology and epidemiology, and since 1925, it has been named the Haffkine Institute.

In 1897, Queen Victoria awarded Haffkine one of the highest orders of the British Empire, The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire. In his honor, a reception was held in London, attended by the leading English medical professionals. The famous surgeon Joseph Lister delivered a welcoming speech. Thanking Haffkine for all the good he had done for India and thereby for Great Britain, Lister remarked that of all the vile things in the world, the most disgusting was antisemitism. In 1904, Haffkin returned to Switzerland.

In 1915, at the English Ministry of War, Haffkine oversaw vaccinations for English soldiers who were being sent to World War I. He spent his money, which had become a fortune thanks to his high salary, on philanthropic purposes, anonymously helping charitable societies and simply those in need. The famous Russian doctor and Zionist Hillel Yaffe wrote about him: “I do not remember a person with a more modest, refined, and developed soul, so faithful to his principles.”

In Paris, Haffkine lived for 15 years. During this time, he became a deeply religious person and wrote an article titled Apology of Orthodox Judaism, in which he argued that a religious way of life is the only possible means of preserving the Jewish people. In this article, there is the following remark: “Always, whatever I did, I understood that the burden of responsibility carried by my people constantly rested on my shoulders. This thought has been my guiding star throughout my life.”

In 1917, the Balfour Declaration was proclaimed, establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine. Haffkine, well acquainted with British colonial policy from his life in India, claimed that Jews were in for disappointment. His pessimistic predictions came true.

In 1920, Haffkine became a member of the central committee of the World Jewish Alliance, the first international Jewish organization founded in 1860, which pursued philanthropic and educational goals. In this position, Haffkine fought against assimilationist tendencies and defended the civil rights of Jews in Eastern European countries. On behalf of the Alliance and another philanthropic organization—the Jewish Colonization Society— Haffkine traveled to Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. There, he became close to the Jewish communities of these countries and gained popularity.

Since 1928, Haffkine lived permanently in Lausanne. In 1929, he visited Berlin. There, he visited the office of the Ezra Society (in Hebrew, help), founded by German Jews in 1884 to promote Jewish colonization in Eretz-Israel, and reported that he had deposited money in a Lausanne bank, which, after his death, was to become a fund for material assistance to needy yeshivas in Eastern Europe.

Waldemar Haffkine died in Lausanne on October 28, 1930. After his death, the bank informed Ezra that the Yeshiva Support Fund had 1,568,852 Swiss francs in its account. In his last will and testament, Haffkine indicated that he was donating the money “to a fund to support the study of Judaism in yeshivas and primary religious schools (Talmud-Torah) in Poland, Galicia, Romania, Lithuania, and other countries in Eastern Europe.” He added: “I consider it my duty to emphasize that this financial assistance […] cannot be used as a means of pressuring yeshivas to change the order or content of their studies in any way. For example, I personally believe that subjects in the field of natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and cosmography, are a useful addition to the main curriculum of yeshivas. Upon leaving the walls of the yeshiva, students, thanks to their familiarity with these disciplines, will not be blinded, as sometimes happens, by the achievements of secular science and will not so easily dismiss the great importance of the knowledge acquired in the yeshiva. […]. It would be good and beneficial if yeshiva students were taught some craft, like watchmaking or jewelry making, or another practical trade, as was customary in ancient times among the blessed memory of our sages. In the future, this would be a means to earn a living through one’s own labor, avoiding need and poverty.”

Haffkine was not only a brave and effective fighter against the epidemics of terrible diseases and the assimilation of the Jews, but also a benefactor and creator of the rational development of the Jewish people.

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Alex Gordon is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education, and the author of 11 books.