The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1997
Awarded on: 1997-10-06
"for his discovery of Prions - a new biological principle of infection"
Affiliations:
- University of California School of Medicine – San Francisco, CA, USA
Stanley B. Prusiner
Born: 1942-05-28 in Des Moines, IA, USA
Gender: male
Field: American neurologist and chemist (born 1942)
Biography
Stanley Ben Prusiner is an American neurologist and biochemist. He is the director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Prusiner discovered prions, a class of infectious self-reproducing pathogens primarily or solely composed of protein, a scientific theory considered by many as a heretical idea when first proposed. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1994 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997 for research on prion diseases developed by him and his team of experts beginning in the early 1970s.