Dear Sir or Madam, website www.myday.si uses cookies, which are intended to record visits. This website does not use cookies that contain your personal information.

Do you allow the usage of cookies on this webpage?
Born on this day
William David Trimble
William David Trimble is a British politician and a Nobel Prize winner
42nd week in year
15 October 2024

Important personalitiesBack

Peter Charles Doherty15.10.1940

Wikipedia (09 Oct 2013, 13:23)

Peter Charles Doherty AC (born 15 October 1940) is an Australian veterinary surgeon and researcher in the field of medicine. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1995, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Rolf M. Zinkernagel in 1996 and was named Australian of the Year in 1997. In the Australia Day Honours of 1997, he was named a Companion of the Order of Australia for his work with Zinkernagel. Zinkernagel was named an honorary Companion. He is also a National Trust Australian Living Treasure. He had a younger brother named Ian and had two parents named Linda and Eric. He skipped a grade in school and entered the University of Queensland when he was 17.

Doherty was one of 20 Nobel Laureates who signed the "Stockholm Memorandum" at the 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability in Stockholm, Sweden on 18 May 2011.


Research

Doherty's research focuses on the immune system and his Nobel work described how the body's immune cells protect against viruses. He and Rolf Zinkernagel, the co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, discovered how T cells recognize their target antigens in combination with major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins.[citation needed]

Viruses infect host cells and reproduce inside them. Killer T-cells destroy those infected cells so that the viruses cannot reproduce. Zinkernagel and Doherty discovered that, in order for killer T cells to recognize infected cells, they had to recognize two molecules on the surface of the cell – not only the virus antigen, but also a molecule of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). This recognition was done by a T-cell receptor on the surface of the T cell. The MHC was previously identified as being responsible for the rejection of incompatible tissues during transplantation. Zinkernagel and Doherty discovered that the MHC was responsible for the body fighting meningitis viruses too.


Life

Doherty was born in Brisbane, Queensland, where he attended Indooroopilly State High School. He received his bachelor's degree in veterinary science in 1962 and his master's degree in veterinary science in 1966 from the University of Queensland. After obtaining his PhD in 1970 from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, he returned to Australia to perform his Nobel Prize-winning research at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra. Doherty currently spends three months of the year conducting research at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where he is a faculty member at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center through the College of Medicine. For the other 9 months of the year he works in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne, Victoria. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1987.

   
" Beautiful moments of our lives."