Peter Doherty is Australian immunologist and pathologist who, with Rolf Zinkernagel of Switzerland, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1996 for the discovery of how the body’s immune system distinguishes virus-infected cells from normal cells.

 

After leading a research group at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania (1975–82), Doherty headed the department of experimental pathology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra (1982–88) and served as chairman (1988–2001) of the department of immunology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where he still holds the Michael F. Tamer Chair of Biomedical Research. In 2002, he joined the faculty of medicine at the University of Melbourne, and from 2014, has been at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, a joint venture between the university and the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

 

Peter is the author of many books, including The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize: A Life in Science (2005), Sentinel Chickens: What Birds Tell Us About Our Health and the World (2012), The Knowledge Wars (2015), The Incidental Tourist (2018) and most recently An Insider’s Plague Year (2021).