Daniel Carleton Gajdusek

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (born September 9, 1923, Yonkers, New York, U.S.A.) is an American physician and medical researcher, who was the corecipient (along with Baruch S. Blumberg) of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976. He received the award in recognition of his study of a remarkable disease, Kuru (Fore word for "trembling"). This disease was rampant among the South Fore people of New Guinea in the 1950's and 1960's. Gajdusek correctly connected the prevalence of the disease with the practice of funerary cannibalism, practiced by the South Fore. With elimination of this practice, Kuru disappeared among the South Fore within a generation.

References

• Daniel Gajdusek, Autobiography, Les Prix Nobel, 1976.
• Karolinska Institutet, Press Release: The 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1976.