Baruch Samuel Blumberg

About Baruch Samuel Blumberg

Who is it?: Physician, Geneticist
Birth Day: July 28, 1925
Birth Place: Brooklyn, New York, U.S., United States
Alma mater: Union College Balliol College, University of Oxford Columbia University
Known for: Hepatitis B vaccine
Spouse(s): Jean Liebesman (m. 1954)
Children: Jane, Anne, George and Noah
Awards: Nobel Prize in Medicine (1976)
Fields: Biochemistry, Physiology
Institutions: Fox Chase Cancer Center University of Pennsylvania NASA Astrobiology Institute Library of Congress

Baruch Samuel Blumberg

Baruch Samuel Blumberg was born on July 28, 1925 in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., United States, is Physician, Geneticist. Baruch Samuel Blumberg also known as Barry Blumberg was a Jewish-American physician and geneticist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 together with American physician and medical researcher Daniel Carleton Gajdusek for their individual research work on infectious viral diseases. Blumberg’s work included identification of the virus that caused Hepatitis B, which often posed to be fatal and many times transferred through blood transfusions. He showed that the virus had capability of causing liver cancer. Later he developed diagnostic tests of the disease and discovered an antigen in the blood sample of an aborigine of Australia, which eventually helped in developing an effective vaccine to counter the disease. Just after completing high school he served the US Navy during the ‘Second World War’. At one time he became a merchant seaman and also worked as a doctor on a ship. He remained University Professor of Anthropology and Medicine at the ‘University of Pennsylvania’ and also served the ‘Balliol College’, of the ‘Oxford University’ as Master. Blumberg remained Director of the ‘NASA Astrobiology Institute’ at the ‘Ames Research Center’ in California. He also served as the President of ‘American Philosophical Society’.
Baruch Samuel Blumberg is a member of Scientists

Does Baruch Samuel Blumberg Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Baruch Samuel Blumberg has been died on April 5, 2011(2011-04-05) (aged 85)\nMountain View, California, U.S..

🎂 Baruch Samuel Blumberg - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday

When Baruch Samuel Blumberg die, Baruch Samuel Blumberg was 85 years old.

Popular As Baruch Samuel Blumberg
Occupation Scientists
Age 85 years old
Zodiac Sign Leo
Born July 28, 1925 (Brooklyn, New York, U.S., United States)
Birthday July 28
Town/City Brooklyn, New York, U.S., United States
Nationality United States

🌙 Zodiac

Baruch Samuel Blumberg’s zodiac sign is Leo. According to astrologers, people born under the sign of Leo are natural born leaders. They are dramatic, creative, self-confident, dominant and extremely difficult to resist, able to achieve anything they want to in any area of life they commit to. There is a specific strength to a Leo and their "king of the jungle" status. Leo often has many friends for they are generous and loyal. Self-confident and attractive, this is a Sun sign capable of uniting different groups of people and leading them as one towards a shared cause, and their healthy sense of humor makes collaboration with other people even easier.

🌙 Chinese Zodiac Signs

Baruch Samuel Blumberg was born in the Year of the Ox. Another of the powerful Chinese Zodiac signs, the Ox is steadfast, solid, a goal-oriented leader, detail-oriented, hard-working, stubborn, serious and introverted but can feel lonely and insecure. Takes comfort in friends and family and is a reliable, protective and strong companion. Compatible with Snake or Rooster.

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Biography/Timeline

1940

Blumberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ida (Simonoff) and Meyer Blumberg, a Lawyer. He first attended the Orthodox Yeshivah of Flatbush for elementary school, where he learned to read and write in Hebrew, and to study the Bible and Jewish texts in their original language. (That school also had among its students a contemporary of Blumberg, Eric Kandel, who is another recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine.) Blumberg then attended Brooklyn's James Madison High School, a school that Blumberg described as having high academic standards, including many teachers with Ph.Ds. After moving to Far Rockaway, Queens, he transferred to Far Rockaway High School in the early 1940s, a school that also produced fellow laureates Burton Richter and Richard Feynman. Blumberg served as a U.S. Navy deck officer during World War II. He then attended Union College in Schenectady, New York and graduated from there with honors in 1946.

1950

Throughout the 1950s, Blumberg traveled the world taking human blood samples, to study the genetic variations in human beings, focusing on the question of why some people contract a disease in a given environment, while others do not. In 1964, while studying "yellow jaundice" (hepatitis), he discovered a surface antigen for hepatitis B in the blood of an Australian aborigine. His work later demonstrated that the virus could cause liver cancer. Blumberg and his team were able to develop a screening test for the hepatitis B virus, to prevent its spread in blood donations, and developed a vaccine. Blumberg later freely distributed his vaccine patent in order to promote its distribution by drug companies. Deployment of the vaccine reduced the infection rate of hepatitis B in children in China from 15% to 1% in 10 years.

1951

Originally entering the graduate program in mathematics at Columbia University, Blumberg switched to Medicine and enrolled at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, from which he received his MD in 1951. He remained at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center for the next four years, first as an intern and then as a resident. He then moved to the University of Oxford and began graduate work in biochemistry at Balliol College, Oxford and earned his DPhil there in 1957. He later became the first American to be master at Balliol College, Oxford.

1964

Blumberg became a member of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) of the Lankenau Hospital Research Institute in Philadelphia in 1964, which later joined the Fox Chase Cancer Center in 1974, and he held the rank of University Professor of Medicine and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania starting in 1977. Concurrently, he was Master of Balliol College from 1989 to 1994. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994. From 1999 to 2002, he was also Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

1992

In 1992, Blumberg participated in the founding of the Hepatitis B Foundation (HBF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding a cure for hepatitis B and improving the lives of those affected by hepatitis B worldwide. He served on the Scientific and Medical Advisory Board, and as its Distinguished Scholar from 1992 until his passing in 2011. Blumberg was a regular and inspirational presence at the Hepatitis Foundation, maintaining an office at The Foundation in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

2001

In 2001, Blumberg was named to the Library of Congress Scholars Council, a body of distinguished scholars that advises the Librarian of Congress. Blumberg served on the Council until his death.

2002

In an interview with the New York Times in 2002 he stated that "[Saving lives] is what drew me to Medicine. There is, in Jewish thought, this idea that if you save a single life, you save the whole world".

2004

In November 2004, Blumberg was named Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of United Therapeutics Corporation, a position he held until his death. As Chairman, he convened three "Conference[s] on Nanomedical and Telemedical Technology", as well as guiding the biotechnology company in the development of a broad-spectrum anti-viral Medicine.

2005

Beginning in 2005, Blumberg also served as the President of the American Philosophical Society. He had first been elected to membership in the society in 1986.

2010

In October 2010, Blumberg participated in the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Lunch with a Laureate program, in which middle and high school students of the Greater Washington D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland area got to engage in an informal conversation with a Nobel Prize–winning scientist over a brown-bag lunch.

2011

In 2011, in recognition of Blumberg's long professional and personal association with the Department of Biochemistry and the Glycobiology Institute, Oxford University established the Baruch Blumberg Professorship in Virology.

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