in 1954, stähelin successfully applied for a 12-month postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the swiss national foundation (snf) to work on a project on phagocytosis inspired by emanuel suter (then at harvard, later second dean of the university of florida medical school). in 1955, stähelin rediscovered the respiratory burst in leucocytes in manfred l. karnovsky's laboratory at the department of bacteriology and immunology, harvard medical school, boston, u.s.a. his experiments stirred the interest of karnovsky, who was at the time unaware of this metabolic phenomenon (which had first been described more than twenty years earlier in 1933 by c. w. baldridge and r. w. gerard). stähelin's elegant work subsequently paved the way for the famous investigations of a.j. sbarra and karnovsky on the role of oxygen in the defense against microorganisms.