Stanley B. Prusiner

He is married to Sandy Turk and has two daughters.

Stanley Benjamin Prusiner was born on May 28, 1942, in Des Moines, Iowa, United States, to Miriam (Spigel) and Lawrence Prusiner. His father, an architect, was drafted into the United States Navy shortly after Stanley was born. In his father’s absence the young child spent much of his time in the company of his mother and grandmother. His father later returned from the war and resumed work as an architect.

Stanley attended Walnut Hills High School where he became known as little Genius for his work on a bug repellent. Taking forward his love for science, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania where he majored in Chemistry. In addition to the numerous science courses, he also studied philosophy, the history of architecture, economics, and Russian history, eventually earning his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry.

He proceeded to earn his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He then did his internship in medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Stanley B. Prusiner moved to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he performed research in the laboratory of Earl Stadtman, studying glutaminases in E. coli. He learned a lot about the research process during this stint and by the end of his time at the NIH, he had decided to pursue a residency in Neurology which he believed would lead to a rewarding career in research.

He began a residency at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in the Department of Neurology in 1972. There he admitted a patient who was suffering from an infection called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) which evoked no response from the body's defenses. He was intrigued by the fatal degenerative disorder which eventually killed his patient.

He began learning more about CJD and began researching about the agents that caused this disease and the seemingly related diseases—kuru of the Fore people of New Guinea and scrapie of sheep.

In 1974, he set up a laboratory to study scrapie. After years of intensive research, he claimed to have isolated the scrapie-causing agent in 1982. He published his findings in a manuscript in which he introduced the term "prion" to refer to a pathogen that consisted primarily or solely of proteins.

At the time of its publication, Prusiner’s findings were criticized by his peers in the scientific fraternity. However, he continued with his research and by the early 1990s, the existence of prions was accepted by many in the scientific community.

Stanley B. Prusiner is best known for his research on prions and the prion diseases, also known as Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). He also founded a company which promoted a test to detect bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle and sheep, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.