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- Baruj Benacerraf - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
(1920-2011). U.S. physician and scientist Baruj Benacerraf was born in Caracas, Venezuela and came to the U.S. in 1940. He became a U.S. citizen in 1943. He was appointed professor of comparative pathology and chairman of the pathology department at Harvard University Medical School in 1970 and became president of the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute (now the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) in Boston in 1980. Benacerraf was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1973) and was awarded the National Medal of Science (1990). He published a number of books, including the Textbook of Immunology (1984) and his autobiography, From Caracas to Stockholm (1998). He shared (with George Snell and Jean Dausset) the 1980 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of genes that regulate immune responses and of the role that some of these genes play in autoimmune diseases. His work led to more successful organ transplants. Benacerraf died Aug. 2, 2011, in Boston, Mass.