Niels Kaj Jerne

Niels K. Jerne FRS (London, England, December 23, 1911 – Castillon du Gard, near Nîmes, Gard, France, October 7, 1994) was a Danish immunologist. He studied medicine at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, and at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where he obtained his Ph.D. with a thesis on characteristics of antibodies. He alternately worked in the United States and Denmark. He was director of the immunology section of the WHO in Geneva. From 1969 he was director of the Basel Institute of Immunology, which granted him the status of emeritus professor.

Together with César Milstein and Georges J.F. Kohler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1984 for his theories on the specificity in the development and control of immune systems and for the discovery of the active principle for the production of monoclonal antibodies.