Niels Kaj Jerne
Niels Kaj Jerne ( born December 23, 1911 in London, England; † October 7, 1994 in Castillon -du- Gard ( Nimes ), Gard, France) was a Danish physician and immunologist. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Life and work
Jerne grew up in England and the Netherlands, where he had studied medicine in Leiden in 1928. Later he continued his studies in Copenhagen, where he got a job as a research assistant at the Danish State Serum Institute after successful completion. In the years 1956-1962 Jerne was a senior employee at the World Health Organization in Geneva. After that, he was head of the microbiology department of the University of Pittsburgh and from 1966 to 1969 director of the Paul -Ehrlich-Institut in Frankfurt am Main.
From 1969 to 1980 Jerne director of the newly founded by the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann -La Roche was " Basel Institute for Immunology ." From 1980 Jerne shifted the focus of its activities to France, where he worked as a consultant at the prestigious Pasteur Institute in Paris.
Scientific achievements
In 1984 he received along with Georges JF Köhler and César Milstein received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine " for theories concerning the specificity in development and control of the immune system ." Jerne created with his studies in preparation for the production of monoclonal antibodies by fusion of immune and tumor cells. He also developed an experimental method for identifying individual immune cells by, transferred the plaque technique of quantitative itemization of viruses, developed by Renato Dulbecco on the immune system. The greatest achievement was his Jerne network theory, in which he explained the regulated interaction of numerous cell types of the immune system. Thus, he paved the way for the genetic explanation of the large variety of antibodies in an organism, found their degree in the work of Susumu Tonegawa.
He was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences. In 1970 he received a Gairdner Foundation International Award.