Blumberg, Baruch Samuel

Blumberg, Baruch Samuel, 1925–, American biochemist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., B.S. Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 1946, M.D. Columbia, 1951, Ph.D. Oxford, 1957. From 1957 to 1964 he worked at the National Institutes of Health. In 1964 he became a professor at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, and in 1976 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with D. Carleton Gajdusek. Blumberg won his share for his discovery of an antigen in the blood of an Australian aborigine that contributed to the development of a vaccine against hepatitis B. In 1999 he was named director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute.

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Blumberg, Baruch Samuel 

Born July 28, 1925, in New York. American physician.

Blumberg graduated from Union College in Schenectady in 1946 and received his M.D. from Columbia University in 1951. From 1957 to 1964 he was head of the geographic medicine and genetics section at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. In 1964 he was appointed director of clinical research at the Institute of Cancer Research in Philadelphia; in 1970 he became a professor of medicine and medical genetics at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1964, Blumberg discovered the Australia antigen in human blood serum. The antigen plays an important role in the development of serum hepatitis; its discovery made possible a reduction in the incidence of serum hepatitis through laboratory techniques for screening the blood received from donors.

Blumberg received a Nobel Prize in 1976.