The collection contains the papers of D. Carleton Gajdusek, physician, virologist, and medical researcher who received the 1976 Nobel Prize in medicine for his discoveries concerning a new mechanism for the origin and dissemination of infectious disease. This research originated as Gajdusek sought to understand kuru, a unique and fatal condition whose victims were primarily the women and children of the Fore people of the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. The collection contains bound and unbound published scientific reprints (1957-1996), published and unpublished typescript journals (1955-1996), and videorecordings (1926-1976) filmed by Gajdusek and others. The collection also includes files related to child abuse charges brought against Gajdusek in 1996 by two of the many children he adopted and brought back to the United States from Papua New Guinea and Micronesia and his subsequent plea bargain agreement.

Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was born in Yonkers, New York, on September 9, 1923. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1943 before receiving his M.D. from Harvard University in 1946. After residencies at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Babies Hospital New York, and Children's Hospital Cincinnati, he served as a fellow in pediatrics and infectious diseases at Harvard from 1949-1952. He then served a year as a captain in the Medical Corps at Walter Reed Army Medical Service Graduate School, studying hemorrhagic fever in Korea and in the USSR.

14.0 lin. ft. (35 archives boxes)

Publication rights are held by the creator of the collection.