Jean Dausset (1916-2009)

Awarded the Prize “for his discoveries concerning genetically determined structures on the cell surface that regulate immunological reactions.”

French hematologist immunologist. Dausset was born on October 19, 1916 at Toulouse, France. During the World War II, after receiving the title of intern of the Paris Hospitals, he joined the fighting forces in North Africa. After the War, he took his degree from the University of Paris in 1945, worked at Regional Blood Transfusion Centre at Hospital Saint-Antoine. In 1948, he was sent to the Children’s Hospital in Boston. In 1958, he became Head of the Immuno-haematology Laboratory at the National Blood Transfusion Centre. In 1963 he was appointed Head of the Immunology Department at Hospital Saint-Louis. Dausset died on June 6, 2009 in Majorca, Spain.