Roberto Juan Poljak (17 September 1932,

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

; – 30 May 2019,

Baltimore County Baltimore County ( , locally: or ) is the third-most populous county in the U.S. state of Maryland and is part of the Baltimore metropolitan area. Baltimore County (which partially surrounds, though does not include, the independent City of ...

) was an Argentine

biophysicist Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study Biology, biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from Molecule, molecular to organismic ...

and immunologist.

Biography

Poljak graduated in 1949 with a bachelor's degree from the ''Colegio Nacional de Quilmes'' and in 1954 with a master's degree from the ''Facultad de Ciencias Naturales'' of the

University of Buenos Aires The University of Buenos Aires ( es, Universidad de Buenos Aires, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Established in 1821, it is the premier institution of higher learning in the country and one o ...

. In 1956 he received his doctoral degree from the National University of La Plata and married Mabel Amelia Iglesias (1929–2020). As a postdoc, he was from 1958 to 1960 at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) and from 1960 to 1962 at the

Royal Institution The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, inc ...

's Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory. Poljak was a biophysics professor from 1962 to 1981 (and from 1972 a full professor) at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was from 1981 to 1992 a professor at the

Pasteur Institute The Pasteur Institute (french: Institut Pasteur) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines f ...

, where he led a group doing research on molecular structures in immunology. From 1992 until his retirement as professor emeritus, Poljak was a full professor at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

and the director of Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology (CARB) in

Rockville, Maryland Rockville is a city that serves as the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, and is part of the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The 2020 census tabulated Rockville's population at 67,117, making it the fifth-largest community in ...

. (CARB was established in 1984 as a joint venture of the University of Maryland's Biotechnology Institute and the

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...

.) (The 1992 ''Baltimore Sun'' article contains a misspelling: "Thomas Poulas" should be "Thomas Poulos".) In the early 1970s at Johns Hopkins University, Poljak as the team leader with 3 other researchers "determined the first 3-D structure of an antibody". In 1986 at the Pasteur Institute, he with 3 colleagues determined the 3-dimensional structure of an antigen-antibody complex, thus elucidating "how antibodies link with antigens". Poljak was in 1986 was made an honorary professor of the University of Buenos Aires. He received in 1989 in Geneva, Switzerland the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and in 1991 in Madrid, Spain the ''Premio Lección Conmemorativa Jiménez Díaz''. Upon his death he was survived by his widow, a son, a daughter, three grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Poljak, Roberto 1932 births 2019 deaths University of Buenos Aires alumni National University of La Plata alumni Johns Hopkins University faculty University System of Maryland faculty Argentine biophysicists Immunologists Scientists from Buenos Aires