Jerne, Niels Kai

Related Category: Medicine: Biographies

(nēls kī yĕr´nə), 1911–94, British-Danish immunologist, b. London. He worked at the Danish State Serum Institute (1945–55) and was chief medical officer to the World Health Organization (1956–62). He developed a “network theory” to explain the interactive processes by which the human immune system creates antibodies against disease. In 1984, Jerne shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with César Milstein and Georges Köhler.