Stanley B. Prusiner

Stanley B. Prusiner (born May 28, 1942) is an American neuroscientist renowned for discovering prions—infectious proteins that cause transmissible spongiform encephalopathies such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and scrapie—earning him the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where his father worked as an architect, Prusiner attended Walnut Hills High School before pursuing a Bachelor of Science in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1964, followed by an MD from the same institution in 1968. His early research at the University of Pennsylvania focused on hypothermia and brown fat metabolism, laying the groundwork for his interest in biochemical mechanisms.

Stanley B. Prusiner was born on May 28, 1942, in Des Moines, Iowa, into a Jewish family of Russian Jewish descent on his father's side. His father, Lawrence Prusiner, was an architect who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a communications officer, while his mother, Miriam (née Spigel), managed the household and actively nurtured his intellectual curiosity by sharing articles about accomplished doctors, which helped spark his early interest in medicine.