Madness and Memory: The Discovery of Prions—A New Biological Principle of Disease

Stanley B. Prusiner

apr. 2014 · Yale University Press

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In this “utterly fascinating” science memoir, the Nobel Prize–winning author chronicles his revolutionary discovery of a major cause of brain diseases (The New York Times).
 
In 1997, Stanley B. Prusiner received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on devastating brain diseases. That he was the award’s sole recipient was entirely appropriate. His struggle to identify the agent responsible for scrapie and mad cow disease in animals, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, had been waged largely alone, and in some cases, in the face of strenuous opposition.
 
In Madness and Memory, Prusiner recounts the journey to his remarkable discovery of prions—infectious proteins that replicate and cause disease, but surprisingly contain no genetic material. Along the way, he sheds light on the world of contemporary science and the meticulousness and perseverance it requires. Through his telling, the agony and triumph of years of research comes to life, along with fascinating portraits of fellow scientists racing to make breakthrough discoveries.
 
Prusiner’s hypothesis, once considered heresy, now stands as accepted science and provides a path toward conquering such pervasive scourges as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s, and others diseases.
 
“Madness and Memory is the story of one of the most important discoveries in recent medical history, and it is also a vivid and compelling portrait of a life in science.” —Oliver Sacks, MD, neurologist and author of Hallucinations

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Stanley B. Prusiner, MD, is director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. The recipient of an array of scientific honors, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997. He lives in San Francisco.