Daniel Carleton Gajdusek
| Daniel Carleton Gajdusek | |
|---|---|
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Gajdusek in 1997
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| Born |
September 9, 1923 Yonkers, New York |
| Died | December 12, 2008 (aged 85) Tromsø, Norway |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Medicine |
| Alma mater | University of Rochester, Harvard Medical School |
| Known for | What was later to be discovered to be Prion |
| Notable awards |
E. Mead Johnson Award (1963) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1976) |
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (pronounced GUY-dah-shek [ˈɡɑjdɑʃɛk] September 9, 1923 – December 12, 2008) was an American physician and medical researcher who was the co-recipient (with Baruch S. Blumberg) of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on kuru, the second human prion disease demonstrated to be infectious.
In 1996, Gajdusek was charged with child molestation and after being convicted, spent 12 months in prison before entering a self-imposed exile in Europe, where he died a decade later.
His papers are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.
Gajdusek's father, Karol Gajdusek, was from Smrdáky, Kingdom of Hungary now in Slovakia and was an ethnic Slovak who was a butcher. His maternal grandparents, ethnic Hungarians of the Calvinist faith, emigrated from Debrecen, Hungary. Gajdusek was born in Yonkers, New York, and graduated in 1943 from the University of Rochester, where he studied physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. He obtained an M.D. from Harvard University in 1946 and performed postdoctoral research at Columbia University, the California Institute of Technology, and Harvard. In 1951, Gajdusek was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned as a research virologist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Service Graduate School. In 1954, after his military discharge, he went to work as a visiting investigator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. There, he began the work that culminated in the Nobel prize.
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