Medicine
Peter Doherty
Immunologist, Nobel Prize in Medicine 1996
Born 1940
Photo: Vogler · CC BY-SA 4.0
«What could be more gratifying than to discover, describe and explain some basic principle that no human being has ever understood before?»
Peter Doherty discovered how the immune system recognises cells infected by a virus, showing that T cells read both the virus and the cell's own identity markers together. The finding underpins modern vaccine design and transplant medicine.
Key achievements
- Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1996, on immune cell recognition
- Australian of the Year, 1997
- The Doherty Institute in Melbourne bears his name
Universities
Melbourne, Victoria
Laureate professor, and the university's Doherty Institute for infection and immunity is named after him.
Facts
- He trained as a veterinary surgeon before moving into human immunology.
- He and Rolf Zinkernagel made the discovery while sharing a laboratory bench as junior researchers in Canberra.
- He was named Australian of the Year in 1997 and has since written several books for general readers.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.