Rolf M. Zinkernagel

Biography

Born and raised in Basel, Rolf Zinkernagel studied at the Medical School of the University of Basel, obtaining his MD degree in 1968, and graduating to become a surgeon. In the Institute of Biochemistry of Lausanne he worked on immunity against infections and1973-75 at the Australian National University, Canberra, where Peter Doherty and he made seminal observations on how cytotoxic T cells recognize virus infected cells in an infected host (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 1996). He moved to the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, USA from 1975 to 1979, where he studied T cell maturation and development of the T cell repertoire, dependent on the transplantation antigen expression in the thymus. In 1980 he joined the Department of Pathology, University of Zurich, as an associate professor where, together with Hans Hengartner, he has been studying immune protection and immunopathology caused by virus infections. He has retired from the University in spring 2008.

Research Interest

Immunology