Baruj Benacerraf

Baruj Benacerraf ( born October 29, 1920 in Caracas, Venezuela; † August 2, 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts ) was a Venezuelan- American physician, who mainly focused on immunology and transplantation medicine.

In 1980, he received together with George Davis Snell and Jean Dausset received the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for the " discovery of genetically determined cellular surface structures from which immunological reactions are controlled. "

Life

Baruj Benacerraf 1920 was the son of Jewish, originating from North Africa parents (his father was born in Spanish Morocco and his mother in Algeria), born in Caracas, Venezuela, but spent his childhood and youth from 1925 to 1939 in Paris, where he attended the Lycée Janson. His father was a wealthy carpet dealer. His brother is the philosopher Paul Benacerraf.

The family moved in 1939 to New York City, where Benacerraf to 1942, studied medicine at Columbia University. Further study was carried out until 1945 at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, after he became a U.S. citizen in 1943. In 1945 he received his doctorate here and was only an assistant physician at New York Hospital Queens, and later in the military hospital in Nancy in France. After the military, he started his research in the microbiological faculty of Columbia University.

Benacerraf 1956 was appointed associate professor of comparative pathology at New York University; 1960 this site was converted into a full professorship. From 1970 until his retirement, he held this chair at Harvard University in Boston, where he also died on August 2, 2011.

Baruj Benacerraf was with Annette Benacerraf († 2011), a niece of the biologist Jacques Monod, married. The only daughter, Beryl Benacerraf Rica, is a professor at the medical faculty of Harvard University.

Work

Baruj Benacerraf and his two excellent colleagues with him dealt decisively with the immunological compatibility of tissues after transplantation. Benacerraf, Dausset and Snell have demonstrated in their experiments that these immune factors are genetically fixed. The three researchers were able to show that even on the white blood cells ( leukocytes) are the same factors as in other body cells. By this immune factors system that the blood group systems works similarly, it is now possible experimentally to examine these factors in advance of transplantation and potential tissue compatibility (or defensive reactions by incompatibility ) predict by tests with patient's blood.

Benacerraf and Dausset employed in parallel to the elucidation of the biochemical key molecules in this histocompatibility complex, while as geneticists Snell identified especially the genes that are responsible for the acceptance and rejection of exogenous tissue. In the years 1973/1974 Baruj Benacerraf served as president of the American Association of Immunologists.

Publications

• Immunology: A Short Textbook, 1st Edition. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York City 1982, ISBN 3-11-008405-8