Harvey Alter · Science & Medicine
Awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus.
12 September 1935, New York
New York, Rochester, Bethesda
Harvey Alter is recognized among Jewish contributors to Science & Medicine — Awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus.
Origins and early life
Harvey James Alter, born in New York on 12 September 1935 to a Jewish family, took his bachelor's degree in 1956 and his medical degree in 1960 at the University of Rochester.
Work and career
At the National Institutes of Health he became chief of the infectious-disease section and associate director for research in the transfusion-medicine department of the Clinical Center. In the mid-1970s he and his team showed that most hepatitis contracted through blood transfusion was caused by neither the hepatitis A virus nor the hepatitis B virus, and transmission studies in chimpanzees proved that a new agent — 'non-A, non-B hepatitis', almost certainly a virus — was responsible.
Recognition
That work led to the identification of the hepatitis C virus in 1988, to the screening of blood that has nearly rid transfusion of hepatitis, and to the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice. Alter also received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 2000 and the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest civilian award of the United States public-health service.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Biology
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Awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus.
Source: Jinfo.org — Jews in Biology
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