Daniel Carleton Gajdusek

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was born September 9, 1923, and built a career as an American physician and medical researcher working on obscure neurological diseases. His fieldwork on kuru, a deadly condition affecting the Fore people, led him to propose that it transmitted through an "unconventional virus" - work that earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976, shared with Baruch S. Blumberg. Twenty years later, in 1996, he was charged with child molestation; he was convicted, served twelve months in prison, then left for Europe and never returned. He openly admitted to the abuse and expressed approval of incest, yet some scientific peers argued for clemency on the grounds of his research contributions. He died in self-imposed exile on December 12, 2008.