Karl Landsteiner discovered the ABO blood group system in 1901 and won the Nobel Prize for medicine for this discovery. In 1940, Landsteiner and Alexander S. Wiener reported the Rh blood group system. Knowing about blood group systems is important for safe blood transfusions and preventing hemolytic disease in newborns. The ABO antigens are sugar chains on red blood cells that differ between blood types. A person's blood type depends on which alleles they inherit for the ABO locus on chromosome 9.