Baruch Samuel Blumberg
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.