Blumberg, Baruch S(amuel) (1925– )

US epidemiologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1976, together with US virologist D Carelton Gajdusek, for demonstrating new mechanisms for the origin and transmission of infectious diseases. In 1963 Blumberg discovered the ‘Australian’ antigen, which proved to be associated with the hepatitis B virus. This finding led to hepatitis B screening programs by blood banks. Blumberg went on to develop a hepatitis B vaccine in 1982.

In 1977 he became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1983 he moved to the University of Washington, Seattle, to become clinical professor of epidemiology. In 1989 he became became master of Balliol College, Oxford. In May 1999 NASA appointed him as head (from September) of its new Astrobiology Institute, based at the Ames Research Center, San Francisco.