Stanley Ben Prusiner is an American neurologist and biochemist. He is the founding director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases (IND) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Prusiner discovered prions, a class of infectious self-reproducing pathogens primarily or solely composed of protein, a scientific theory considered by many as a heretical idea when first proposed. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1994 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997 for research on prion diseases developed by him and his team of experts beginning in the early 1970s. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1997, announced October 6, 1997. Stanley B. Prusiner, “for his discovery of Prions - a new biological principle of infection”. Stanley B. Prusiner: born 1942, Des Moines, IA, USA. Wiki link Data: the Nobel Foundation (CC0).