Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (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 first human prion disease demonstrated to be infectious. His later life was marred by a criminal conviction for child sexual abuse.
Gajdusek's father, Karol Gajdusek, was from Smrdáky, Slovakia and his maternal...
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Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (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 first human prion disease demonstrated to be infectious. His later life was marred by a criminal conviction for child sexual abuse.
Gajdusek's father, Karol Gajdusek, was from Smrdáky, Slovakia and his maternal grandparents immigrated from Debrecen, Hungary. They lived in Yonkers, New York, where their son was born. Gajdusek graduated in 1943 from the University of Rochester (New York), where he studied Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics. He obtained an M.D. from Harvard University in 1946. He performed postdoctoral research at Columbia, Caltech and Harvard before being drafted to complete military service at the Walter Reed Army Medical Service Graduate School as a research virologist. He held a position at the Institut Pasteur in Tehran...
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