Zinkernagel, Rolf M

Zinkernagel, Rolf M(artin)

(born Jan. 6, 1944, Basel, Switz.) Swiss immunologist and pathologist. He received his Ph.D. from the Australian National University. Studying T cells in mice infected with a meningitis virus, he and Peter Doherty found that those from one infected mouse would destroy infected cells from another only if the mice belonged to the same genetic strain: no immune response occurs unless the T cells recognize two signals, those of the virus and those identifying the cell as “self.” In 1992 he became head of the University of Zürich's Institute of Experimental Immunology. In 1996 he and Doherty shared a Nobel Prize.