Peter Doherty (immunologist)

Peter Charles Doherty is an Australian immunologist and Nobel laureate, born on 15 October 1940 in the Brisbane suburb of Sherwood. He took a bachelor's degree in veterinary science at the University of Queensland in 1962, worked as a rural veterinary officer and then at the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock's Animal Research Institute, gained a master's degree in veterinary science in 1966 and a PhD in pathology from the University of Edinburgh in 1970, and returned to Australia to research at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra. In 1988 he joined St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, as chair of its Department of Immunology, a post he kept until 2001. With Rolf Zinkernagel he discovered how T cells recognise their target antigens in combination with major histocompatibility complex proteins, work that describes how the body's immune cells protect against viruses. It brought them the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1995 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996, and he was named Australian of the Year in 1997.