Stanley_B._Prusiner--Joseph_Leo_Doob

Stanley Ben Prusiner (born May 28, 1942) 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, 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 prion research developed by him and his team of experts (David E. Garfin, D. P. Stites, W. J. Hadlow, C. M. Eklund) beginning in the early 1970s.