The collection contains the papers of D. Carleton Gajdusek, virologist and medical researcher who received the 1976 Nobel Prize in medicine for his discoveries concerning a new mechanism for the origin and dissemination of infectious disease. This research originated as Gajdusek sought to understand kuru, a unique and fatal condition whose victims were among the Fore people of the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea.

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was born in Yonkers, New York, on September 9, 1923. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1943 before receiving his M.D. from Harvard University in 1946. After residencies at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Babies Hospital New York, and Children's Hospital Cincinnati, he served as a fellow in pediatrics and infectious diseases at Harvard from 1949-1952. He then served a year as a captain in the Medical Corps at Walter Reed Army Medical Service Graduate School, studying hemorrhagic fever in Korea and in the USSR.

14 Linear feet (35 archives boxes)

Publication rights are held by the creator of the collection.

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