Baruj benacerraf autobiography in five short

Venezuelan-American- Moroccan immunologist

Baruj Benacerraf (; October 29, 1920 – August 2, 2011) was a Venezuelan-American immunologist, who shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the "discovery of the major histocompatibility complex genes which encode cell surface protein molecules important for the immune system's distinction between self and non-self."^[8][9] His colleagues and shared recipients were Jean Dausset and George Davis Snell.

Early life and education

Benacerraf was born in Caracas, Venezuela on October 29, 1920, to a Moroccan-Venezuelan Sephardic Jewish father, Abraham Benacerraf, and Algerian Jewish mother, Henrietta Lasry.^[6] His father was a textile merchant. His brother was philosopher Paul Benacerraf. He moved to Paris from Venezuela with his family in 1925. After going back to Venezuela, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1940. That same year, Benacerraf attended Lycée Français de New Yor