This is a ''list of notable immunologists.''

Pioneers

Edward Jenner Edward Jenner, (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was a British physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines, and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms ''vaccine'' and ''vaccination'' are derived f ...

(1749-1823), discovered that

cowpox Cowpox is an infectious disease caused by the ''cowpox virus'' (CPXV). It presents with large blisters in the skin, a fever and swollen glands, historically typically following contact with an infected cow, though in the last several decades more ...

induces protection against

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...

* Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), his experiments confirmed the

germ theory of disease The germ theory of disease is the currently accepted scientific theory for many diseases. It states that microorganisms known as pathogens or "germs" can lead to disease. These small organisms, too small to be seen without magnification, invade ...

, he also created the first

vaccine A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. The safety and effectiveness of vaccines has been widely studied and verified.

for

rabies Rabies is a viral disease that causes encephalitis in humans and other mammals. Early symptoms can include fever and tingling at the site of exposure. These symptoms are followed by one or more of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, ...

Nobel laureates

*1901

Emil Adolf von Behring Emil von Behring (; Emil Adolf von Behring), born Emil Adolf Behring (15 March 1854 – 31 March 1917), was a German physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first one awarded in that field, for his discovery ...

(1854-1917), "for his serum therapy to treat

diphtheria Diphtheria is an infection caused by the bacterium '' Corynebacterium diphtheriae''. Most infections are asymptomatic or have a mild clinical course, but in some outbreaks more than 10% of those diagnosed with the disease may die. Signs and s ...

" (First ever

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accord ...

) *1908 Eli Metchnikoff (1845-1916) and

Paul Ehrlich Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure ...

(1854-1915), "for study of the immune system" *1919 Jules Bordet (1870-1961), "for discovery of the complement system in the immune system" *1930

Karl Landsteiner Karl Landsteiner (; 14 June 1868 – 26 June 1943) was an Austrian-born American biologist, physician, and immunologist. He distinguished the main blood groups in 1900, having developed the modern system of classification of blood groups from ...

(1868-1943), "for discovery of human blood types" *1960 Peter B. Medawar (1915-1987) and

Frank Macfarlane Burnet Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, (3 September 1899 – 31 August 1985), usually known as Macfarlane or Mac Burnet, was an Australian virologist known for his contributions to immunology. He won a Nobel Prize in 1960 for predicting acquired immune ...

(1899-1985), "for the discovery that the immune system of the fetus learns how to distinguish between self and non-self" *1972 Gerald Maurice Edelman (1929-2014) and Rodney Robert Porter (1917-1985), "for discovering the chemical structure of antibodies" *1980 Baruj Benacerraf (1920-2011),

Jean Dausset Jean-Baptiste-Gabriel-Joachim Dausset (19 October 1916 – 6 June 2009) was a French immunologist born in Toulouse, France. Dausset received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1980 along with Baruj Benacerraf and George Davis Snell fo ...

(1916-2009) and

George Davis Snell George Davis Snell NAS (December 19, 1903 – June 6, 1996) was an American mouse geneticist and basic transplant immunologist. Work George Snell shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Baruj Benacerraf and Jean Dausset ...

(1903-1996), "for discovery of the Major histocompatibility complex genes which encode cell surface molecules important for the immune system's distinction between self and non-self" *1984

Niels Jerne Niels is a male given name, equivalent to Nicholas, which is common in Denmark, Belgium, Norway (formerly) and the Netherlands. The Norwegian and Swedish variant is Nils. The name is a developed short form of Nicholas or Greek Nicolaos after Saint ...

(1911-1994), Georges J. F. Köhler (1946-1995) and César Milstein (1927-2002), "for work on the immune system and the production of monoclonal antibodies" *1987 Susumu Tonegawa (1939-), "for discovering how the large diversity of antibodies is produced genetically" *1989

J. Michael Bishop John Michael Bishop (born February 22, 1936) is an American immunologist and microbiologist who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Harold E. Varmus and was co-winner of 1984 Alfred P. Sloan Prize. He serves as an activ ...

(1936-) and

Harold E. Varmus Harold Eliot Varmus (born December 18, 1939) is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center. He was ...

(1939-), "for discovering the cellular origins of retroviral oncogenes" *1996 Peter C. Doherty (1940-) and Rolf M. Zinkernagel (1944-), "for describing how MHC molecules are used by white blood cells to detect and kill virus-infected cells." *2011 Bruce Beutler (1957-), Jules A. Hoffmann (1941-), "for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity" and Ralph Marvin Steinman (1943-2011)"for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity" *2018

James P. Allison James Patrick Allison (born August 7, 1948) is an American immunologist and Nobel laureate who holds the position of professor and chair of immunology and executive director of immunotherapy platform at the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the Uni ...

(1948-) and

Tasuku Honjo is a Japanese physician-scientist and immunologist. He won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and is best known for his identification of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1). He is also known for his molecular identification o ...

(1942-), "for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation."{{Cite web, url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2018/summary/, title = The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2018

Notable immunologists

Alan Aderem Alan Aderem is an American biologist, specializing in immunology and cell biology. Aderem's particular focus is the innate immune system, the part of the immune system that responds generically to pathogens. His laboratory's research focuses on ...

innate immunity The innate, or nonspecific, immune system is one of the two main immunity strategies (the other being the adaptive immune system) in vertebrates. The innate immune system is an older evolutionary defense strategy, relatively speaking, and is the ...

* Lorne Babiuk (1946-) * Mike Belosevic (1951-) *

Kiril Bratanov Kiril Tsochev Bratanov ( bg, Кирил Цочев Братанов; 5 March 1911 – 16 October 1986) was a prominent Bulgarian biologist and pioneer in the area of immunology of reproduction. Education and early life Kiril Bratanov was born ...

(1911-1986), pioneer in the area of immunology of reproduction *

William Coley William Bradley Coley (January 12, 1862 – April 16, 1936) was an American bone surgeon and cancer researcher best known for his early contributions to the study of cancer immunotherapy. Although his work was not proven effective in his lifetime ...

(1862-1936), pioneer of cancer immunotherapy *

Albert Coons Albert Hewett Coons (June 28, 1912 – September 30, 1978) was an American physician, pathologist, and immunologist. He was the first person to conceptualize and develop immunofluorescent techniques for labeling antibodies in the early 1940 ...

(1912-1978), developed immunofluorescent techniques for labelling antibodies * Max D. Cooper (1933-), identification of T and B cells * Yehuda Danon (1940-) *

Deborah Doniach Deborah Doniach MD FRCP ( Abileah; 6 April 1912 – 1 January 2004) was a British clinical immunologist and pioneer in the field of autoimmune diseases. Early and personal life Deborah Abileah was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on 6 April 1912 ...

(1912-2004), organ-specific auto-immunity *

Eva Engvall Eva Engvall, born 1940, is one of the scientists who invented ELISA in 1971. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Vita Eva Engvall earned her PhD from the University of Stockholm in 1975. Her postd ...

(1940-), one of the scientists who invented

ELISA The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (, ) is a commonly used analytical biochemistry assay, first described by Eva Engvall and Peter Perlmann in 1971. The assay uses a solid-phase type of enzyme immunoassay (EIA) to detect the presen ...

in 1971. * Anthony Fauci (1940-) * Denise Faustman (1958-),

Type 1 diabetes Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is an autoimmune disease that originates when cells that make insulin (beta cells) are destroyed by the immune system. Insulin is a hormone required for the cells to use blood sugar ...

* William Frankland (1912-2020), popularisation of the UK pollen count, and prediction of increased penicillin allergy *

Ian Frazer Ian Hector Frazer (born 6 January 1953) is a Scottish-born Australian immunologist, the founding CEO and Director of Research of the Translational Research Institute (Australia). Frazer and Jian Zhou developed and patented the basic technolo ...

(1953-), development of a cervical cancer

* Samuel O. Freedman (1928-), discovered Carcinoembryonic antigen * Jules T. Freund (1890-1960) * Sankar Ghosh * John Grange (1943-2016) *

Waldemar Haffkine Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine ( uk, Володимир Мордехай-Вольф Хавкін; russian: Мордехай-Вольф Хавкин; 15 March 1860 Odessa – 26 October 1930 Lausanne) was a Ukrainian-French bacteriologist kno ...

(1860-1930), first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. *

Michael Heidelberger Michael Heidelberger (April 29, 1888 – June 25, 1991) was an American immunologist, often regarded as the father of modern immunology. He and Oswald Avery showed that the polysaccharides of pneumococcus are antigens, enabling him to show tha ...

(1888-1991), showed that antibodies are proteins * George Heist (1886-1920) * Leonard Herzenberg (1931-2013) * Miroslav Holub (1923-1998) * Charles Janeway (1943-2003), wrote the standard textbook ''Immunobiology'' * Dermot Kelleher * Tadamitsu Kishimoto (1939-) * Jan Klein (1936-), Mhc * Mary Loveless (1899-1991), insect venom allergy *

Tak Wah Mak Tak Wah Mak, (; born October 4, 1946, in China) is a Canadian medical researcher, geneticist, oncologist, and biochemist. He first became widely known for his discovery of the T-cell receptor in 1983 and pioneering work in the genetics of immun ...

(1946-), discovery of the

T-cell receptor The T-cell receptor (TCR) is a protein complex found on the surface of T cells, or T lymphocytes, that is responsible for recognizing fragments of antigen as peptides bound to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules. The binding b ...

* Alberto Mantovani * Polly Matzinger (1947-), immunological tolerance, Danger Model, Hyppo Model * Ira Mellman *

Jacques Miller Jacques Francis Albert Pierre Miller AC FRS FAA (born 2 April 1931) is a French-Australian research scientist. He is known for having discovered the function of the thymus and for the identification, in mammalian species of the two major subset ...

(1931-) * Avrion Mitchison (1928-) *

Michael Neuberger Michael Samuel Neuberger FRS FMedSci (2 November 1953 – 26 October 2013) was a British biochemist and immunologist. Biography Born in Kensington, Michael Samuel Neuberger was the fourth of five children of Albert Neuberger and Lilian Ida ...

(1953-2013) * Evelyn Nicol (1930-2020) * Alan Munro (1937-) *

Gustav Nossal Sir Gustav Victor Joseph Nossal (born 4 June 1931) is an Austrian-born Australian research biologist. He is famous for his contributions to the fields of antibody formation and immunological tolerance. Early life and education Nossal's family ...

(1931-) *

Santa J. Ono Santa Jeremy Ono ( ja, 小野三太; born November 23, 1962) is a Canadian-American immunologist and academic administrator, currently serving as the 15th President of the University of Michigan, president of the University of Michigan since O ...

(1962-) *

Thomas Platts-Mills Thomas Alexander Evelyn Platts-Mills, FRS (born 1941, Colchester) son of British member of parliament and barrister John Platts-Mills, is a British allergy researcher and director of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the Univers ...

(1941-), discovered dust-mite allergen and

alpha-gal allergy Alpha-gal allergy — or mammalian meat allergy (MMA) — is a type of meat allergy characterized by a delayed onset of symptoms (3–8 hours) after ingesting mammalian meat and resulting from past exposure to tick bites. It was first reported in ...

from tick bites * Nicholas P. Restifo (1960-) *

Ivan Roitt Ivan Maurice Roitt (born 30 September 1927) is a British scientist. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Balliol College, Oxford University. He was Head of the Department of Immunology at University College London from 1967 to ...

(1927-) * Jon van Rood (1926-2017), pioneer in the field of HLA and immunogenetics of transplantation, the founder of the international organ exchange organization

Eurotransplant The Eurotransplant International Foundation, commonly known simply as Eurotransplant, is an international non-profit organization responsible for encouraging and coordinating organ transplants in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Luxem ...

* Mario Rosemblatt (1941-), who established that dendritic cells are responsible for imprinting the tissue-specific homing of T lymphocytes * Fred Rosen (1930-2005), discovered the cause of

X-linked Sex linked describes the sex-specific patterns of inheritance and presentation when a gene mutation (allele) is present on a sex chromosome (allosome) rather than a non-sex chromosome (autosome). In humans, these are termed X-linked recessive, ...

hyper IgM syndrome Hyper IgM syndrome describes a group of primary immune deficiency disorders characterized by defective CD40 signaling; ''via'' B cells affecting class switch recombination (CSR) and somatic hypermutation. Immunoglobulin (Ig) class switch reco ...

* Shimon Sakaguchi (1948-), discovery of regulatory T cells * Louis W. Sauer (1885-1980), perfected

pertussis vaccine Pertussis vaccine is a vaccine that protects against whooping cough (pertussis). There are two main types: whole-cell vaccines and acellular vaccines. The whole-cell vaccine is about 78% effective while the acellular vaccine is 71–85% effectiv ...

, developed diphtheria/p daertussis/tetanus vaccine * Emil Skamene (1941-) * David Talmage (1919-2014),

clonal selection In immunology, clonal selection theory explains the functions of cells of the immune system (lymphocytes) in response to specific antigens invading the body. The concept was introduced by Australian doctor Frank Macfarlane Burnet in 1957, in an ...

theory * James S. Tan (1927-2006) * Reyes Tamez (1952-) * Kevin J. Tracey (1957-) *

Jan Vilcek Jan, JaN or JAN may refer to: Acronyms * Jackson, Mississippi (Amtrak station), US, Amtrak station code JAN * Jackson-Evers International Airport, Mississippi, US, IATA code * Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), a Syrian militant group * Japanese Article Numb ...

(1933-) *

Ellen Vitetta Ellen S. Vitetta is the director of the Cancer Immunobiology Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.Mak, Tak W. & Mary E. Saudners. ''Primer to the Immune Response.'' Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2008. ix. B ...

* Alexander S. Wiener (1907-1976) * Don Wiley (1944-2001), crystallography of HLA proteins *

Ian Wilson (biologist) Ian Andrew Wilson is the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology and chair of the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, United States. Education He received his ...

Ernst Witebsky Ernst Witebsky, also Ernest Witebsky (3 September 1901 in Frankfurt am Main – 7 December 1969) was a German-American immunologist. Early life and education Ernst Witebsky was born in Frankfurt am Main. From 1920 to 1926 Witebsky studied medic ...

(1901-1969), isolation and partial characterization of A and B blood antigens *

Jian Zhou Jian Zhou (; 1957 – March 1999) was a Chinese virologist and cancer researcher, who with fellow researcher Ian Frazer, invented Gardasil and Cervarix, the vaccines for stimulating human immunological resistance to the cervical cancer-induci ...

(1957-1999), with co-inventor

has priority for invention of

Virus-like particle Virus-like particles (VLPs) are molecules that closely resemble viruses, but are non-infectious because they contain no viral genetic material. They can be naturally occurring or synthesized through the individual expression of viral structural pro ...

and HPV vaccine

Immunologists in popular culture

Allison Cameron Allison Cameron, M.D., is a fictional character on the Fox medical drama ''House'', portrayed by American actress Jennifer Morrison. An immunologist, Cameron was a member of Dr. Gregory House's team of handpicked specialists at Princeton-Pla ...

, character on the television series '' House M.D.''

References

Immunologists