Blumberg, Baruch Samuel, 1925–2011, American biochemist and medical anthropologist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., B.S. Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 1946, M.D. Columbia, 1951, Ph.D. Oxford, 1957. From 1957 to 1964 he worked at the National Institutes of Health. From 1964 he was associated with the Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, and was a professor at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, where he was university professor after 1977. In 1976 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with D. Carleton Gajdusek. Blumberg won his share for his discovery of an antigen in the blood of an Australian aborigine that contributed to the development of a vaccine against hepatitis B. He later was master (1989–94) of Balliol College, Oxford, and founding director (1999–2002) of NASA's Astrobiology Institute.
See his Hepatitis B: The Hunt for a Killer Virus (2002).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Biochemistry: Biographies
