biography
| name: |
Gajdusek, D(aniel) Carleton
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1923– )
|
| biography:
| Virologist, born in Yonkers, New York, USA. After serving paediatric residencies and performing research on infectious diseases in the USA and abroad, he joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (1958). In 1957 he began a series of expeditions to the Fore tribe of E New Guinea. While investigating kuru, the endemic fatal degeneration of the central nervous system, he found that the disease was due to a slow-acting protein virus transmitted by ritual funeral cannibalism. For his work with kuru and other slow-acting viral neuropathologies, he shared the 1976 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Also a child comparative behaviourist, anthropologist, and collector of primitive art, he adopted and facilitated the education of 29 Pacific island children. He alternated NIH work in the USA with field trips to New Guinea, Micronesia, and Melanesia. |
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