Eva Klein

Eva Klein ( Eva Fischer; 22 January 1925 – 19 January 2025) was a Hungarian-Swedish scientist. Klein worked at the Karolinska Institute since leaving Hungary in 1947. Their award noted their "discoveries of tumor-specific antigens in the mouse, to the most comprehensive immunological analysis of a human cancer, Burkitt's lymphoma".

Early life and education Eva Fischer was born on 22 January 1925 in Budapest, Hungary, to a well-to-do Jewish family. She attended private school, with an interest in sports, theater, and science (inspired by the life and work of Marie Curie). Her career choices were constrained by the political situation, with worsening anti-semitism and persecution when Hungary was occupied by Germany after she finished secondary school. Fischer broke from her medical studies to act in the theater, but returned to medicine.

Eva married another medical student George Klein, leaving Hungary to live in Sweden in 1947. She established her own areas of research from 1948 encouraged by Torbjörn Caspersson from Karolinska's Department of Cell Research and Genetics, while also collaborating closely with her husband throughout her career.

Personal life and death Both Klein and her husband George Klein worked as they studied for their medical degrees in Stockholm. She gave an interview to Swedish radio in November 2015, saying that continuing to work kept her young at 90.

The Kleins undertook wide-ranging pioneering work, jointly and separately, in cancer immunology and how cancer cells' malignant behavior can be suppressed by genes in normal cells.

Major achievements and honors In the 1960s, Eva Klein developed cell lines from Burkitt's lymphoma that continue to be used. Klein named them "natural killer cells".

Klein became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1987 and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1993.

In 2005, the year of the Kleins' 80th birthdays, scientists at the Karolinska Institute established the Georg and Eva Klein Foundation, including a major donation from the Cancer Research Institute.

Klein was awarded the Karolinska's Silver Medal for Medical Research in 2010.