Baruj Benacerraf life and biography

Baruj Benacerraf was a Venezuelan-born American immunologist, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the "discovery of the major histocompatibility complex genes which encode cell surface protein molecules important for the immune system's distinction between self and non-self". His colleagues and shared recipients were Jean Dausset and George Davis Snell.

Born in Venezuela, raised in France, and educated in America, pathologist and immunologist Baruj Benacerraf discovered the genes that regulate the body's immune responses, and showed how these genes are involved in autoimmune diseases (in which the immune system mistakenly attacks instead of defends). In 1980 he received the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology, for "discovery of the Major histocompatibility complex genes which encode cell surface molecules important for the immune system's distinction between self and non-self." The award was shared with Jean Dausset and George D. Snell.

Benacerraf's findings have advanced the scientific understanding of such autoimmune diseases as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. He served more than a decade as President of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, to which he gave his Nobel winnings. "I felt it was the best way to show my belief in the research goals of the institute", he said, "to benefit mankind by eradication of cancer." His brother, Paul Benacerraf, is a well-known mathematician and philosopher, and his daughter, Beryl Benacerraf, is a professor of radiology at Harvard.

Author of books:

Immunological Tolerance: Mechanisms and Potential Therapeutic Applications (1974, with David H. Katz)
Immunogenetics and immunodeficiency (1975)
Textbook of Immunology (1984, with Emil R. Unanue)
From Caracas to Stockholm: A Life in Medical Science (1998, autobiography)

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