Didier Raoult

Didier Raoult ( born 1952 in Dakar ) is a French doctor, microbiologist and infectiologist.

Life

Career

Didier Raoult's father was a military surgeon in Dakar, nurse his mother. As a teenager, Didier Raoult was a rebellious, bad student, who repeated several classes. In 1968, he left in the penultimate class the Lycée. He hired on a passenger ship Renaissance on, then put a free candidate the baccalauréat littéraire from, be tried for a while to the Chinese language, went again to sea and eventually took a degree in medicine - the only study that his father was ready financially to support. His service as a doctor, he completed within eight months. His military service he served as a doctor from Tahiti. During this time he began to specialize in infectious diseases. He then worked on a post-doctoral position in the U.S., suggested there but an attractive job offer from. Instead he founded in 1983 in Marseille at the Hôpital de la Timone, a laboratory for the study of rickettsiae.

The laboratory at the Hôpital de la Timone

At that time, the research interest was to infectious diseases is not very pronounced, and in his own words he was able to quickly make a name. Since then, the laboratory has identified nearly 100 new pathogens, described and sequenced. It now has approximately 140 employees and is a globally respected center for diseases such as Coxiellosis and Whipple 's disease. Patients from around the world looking for there advice; between 10,000 and 15,000 blood samples and tissues from around the world are filed annually for analysis.

Research results

Didier Raoult has published around 1,300 works. Particular scientific fame he owes a series of startling discoveries. In 2004 he published in Science the report on the DNA sequence of the Mimivirus, which had to be determined in collaboration with the laboratory of Marseille genome laboratory of Jean -Michel Claverie. 2008 published members of his team in the Nature report on the discovery of the Sputnik virus, a parasitic companion virus: it can proliferate only in the presence of Mimivirus. The Sputnik virus is the first example of such dependent propagation between two marine species of virus. Another kind of giant viruses, Marseillevirus, was discovered at his laboratory in 2009.

2010 Didier Raoult was for his work with the Grand Prize of the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM ) excellent.

Family

Didier Raoult is married to a psychiatrist. Both daughters have also chosen medicine as a career.