BENACERRAF, BARUJ

BENACERRAF, BARUJ (1920– ), physician and Nobel Prize laureate in medicine. Benacerraf was born in Caracas, Venzuela. He moved to the United States in 1939 and graduated in science from Columbia University, New York, in 1942 and in medicine from the Medical School of Virginia in 1945. His life-long research interest was immunology. He worked at Columbia University in 1948–49, the Broussais Hospital in Paris in 1949–56, and the New York University School of Medicine in 1956–68, where he became professor. He was director of the immunology laboratory at the National Institute   of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, in 1968–70 and Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology, Harvard Medical School, from 1970. In 1980 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine (jointly with George Snell and Jean Dausset) for establishing that immune responses are genetically controlled. This and his other discoveries have profound implications for understanding immunity in infections, allergy, and cancer. Among his many awards is the Rabbi Shai Shacknai Prize in immunology and cancer research of the Hebrew University in 1974. He was a member of the board of governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science. He had a special interest in the training of young scientists. He abandoned a successful business career to concentrate on research and his pride in his Sephardi origins was expressed in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. (Michael Denman (2nd ed.)