Stanislaus Josef Mathias von Prowazek, Edler von Lanow (12 November 1875 Jindřichův Hradec, Bohemia – 17 February 1915, Cottbus), born Stanislav Provázek, was a Czech biologist, zoologist and parasitologist, who along with pathologist Henrique da Rocha Lima (1879-1956) discovered the pathogen of epidemic typhus.
As a student in biology at the University of Prague, he was influenced by the teachings of zoologist Berthold Hatschek and philosopher Ernst Mach. Other important influences to his career were immunologist Paul Ehrlich at the Institute for Experimental Therapy in Frankfurt (1901) and zoologist Richard von Hertwig at the University of Munich.[1]
With radiologist Ludwig Halberstädter, he described the inclusion bodies (Halberstädter-Prowazek bodies) of Chlamydia trachomatis, the agent that is the cause of trachoma.[1]
In 1906 he succeeded his late friend, Fritz Schaudinn, as director of the zoological section at the Institut für Schiffs- und Tropenkrankheiten in Hamburg. In 1908 he conducted research at the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, outside of Rio de Janeiro, and from 1910, carried out investigations of infectious diseases in Sumatra, German Samoa, Yap and Saipan.[1]
Prowazek studied epidemic typhus in Serbia (1913) and Istanbul (1914). Later, while Prowazek and Rocha Lima were working in a German prisoner-of-war camp hospital in Cottbus, they both became infected with typhus. Prowazek died soon afterwards on February 17, 1915. Rocha Lima named the infectious agent of epidemic typhus - Rickettsia prowazekii - after his colleague.