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Baruch Samuel Blumberg (born July 28, 1925) is an American doctor and recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine for "discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases." Blumberg identified the Hepatitis B virus, and later developed the diagnostic test and vaccine for it. His daughter June Blumberg is married to the Director-General of the BBC Mark Thompson.

Blumberg first attended Far Rockaway High School in the early 1940s, a school that also produced fellow laureates Burton Richter and Richard Feynman.^[1] He then attended Union College in Schenectady, NY and graduated with honors in 1945. He then entered the graduate program in mathematics at Columbia University but his interests turned to medicine and he enrolled at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, from which he received his M.D. in 1951. He remained at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center for the next four years, first as an intern and then as a resident . He then began graduate work in biochemistry at Balliol College, Oxford and earned his D.Phil in 1957.

He has been a member of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia since 1964 and has held the rank of University Professor of Medicine and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania since 1977. Concurrently, he was Master of Balliol College from 1989 to 1994. From 1999 to 2002, he was also director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.

References

Further reading

• Payen, JL; Rongières (Jan 2003). "[History of hepatitis. 3. The age of antigens and electronic microscopy]" (in French). La Revue du praticien 53 (1): 7–10. ISSN 0035-2640. PMID 12673918.  
• Blumberg, BS (Dec 2002). "Baruch Blumberg--hepatitis B and beyond. Interviewed by Pam Das". The Lancet infectious diseases 2 (12): 767–71. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(02)00458-9. ISSN 1473-3099. PMID 12467696.  
• Raju, TN (Oct 1999). "The Nobel chronicles. 1976: Baruch S Blumberg (b 1925); Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (1923)". Lancet 354 (9187): 1394. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)76253-X. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 10533898.  
• Blumberg, BS; Alter; Visnich (Jul 1984). "Landmark article Feb 15, 1965: A 'new' antigen in leukemia sera. By Baruch S. Blumberg, Harvey J. Alter, and Sam Visnich". JAMA 252 (2): 252–7. doi:10.1001/jama.252.2.252. ISSN 0098-7484. PMID 6374187.  
• Datta, RK; Datta (May 1977). "Nobel Prize winners in medicine (1976)". Journal of the Indian Medical Association 68 (10): 216–8. ISSN 0019-5847. PMID 333031.  
• "[The Nobel prize for Medicine in 1976 (DC Gajdusek)(BS Blumberg)]" (in Dutch). Nederlands tijdschrift voor geneeskunde 120 (46): 1981. Nov 1976. ISSN 0028-2162. PMID 796735.  
• Salmi, A (1976). "[Nobel prize winners in physiology and medicine]" (in Finnish). Duodecim 92 (23): 1314–6. ISSN 0012-7183. PMID 1001226.