Stanley B. Prusiner

Who is this?

Stanley Ben Prusiner (born May 28, 1942) is an American neurologist and biochemist. He is the director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Prusiner discovered prions, a class of infectious self-reproducing pathogens primarily or solely composed of protein, a scientific theory 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 Ph