Tikvah Alper

Tikvah Alper was a distinguished radiobiologist, who had trained as a physicist. Among many other initiatives and discoveries, she was among the first to find evidence indicating that the infectious agent in scrapie does not contain nucleic acid: a finding that was instrumental in understanding the development of the prion theory. She was director of the MRC Experimental Radiopathology Unit, Hammersmith Hospital, London, UK, 1962–1974.