His mother originated from Lorraine, his father from the Pyrénées, two French provinces very distant from one another and with vast cultural differences. His parents met in Paris. During the First World War, his father, a doctor and captain in the army, sent Jean Dausset's mother and the first three children to Toulouse. It was there that Jean Dausset was born, on 19th October 1916, and this region has held a strong attachment for him ever since.

After the war, his father worked as a physiotherapist and radiologist, dividing his time between Paris and the spa towns. Jean Dausset spent his early childhood in Biarritz, until the age of secondary school. Then, when he was 11 years old, his family came to settle permanently in Paris. He pursued his secondary studies at the Lycée Michelet and obtained his baccalaureate in mathematics.

His choice of career was almost dictated by that of his father, Henri Dausset, who pioneered Rheumatology in France. His medical studies progressed without incident until the advent of the Second World War, when they were interrupted. He was mobilized in 1939 and returned from the French Campaign in 1940 to a Paris occupied by the Germany Army. He began to devote his time ardently to the preparation of a competitive examination for the title of Intern of the Paris Hospitals. Upon receiving this title, he immediately left to join the fighting forces in North Africa. During the Tunisian Campaign, he performed blood transfusions in the army. This was his first introduction to immunohaematology.

While training in Algiers, he performed his first laboratory experiments and carried out his first scientific study on blood platelets.

On his return in 1944, to a liberated Paris, he was given the responsibility for collection of blood samples in the Paris area, working from the Regional Blood Transfusion Centre at Hôpital Saint-Antoine.

As soon as the war was over, he undertook his first real research study, in collaboration with Professor Marcel Bessis. Professor Bessis had just developed exchange-transfusion in new-born babies and adults. It is impossible to say how much time he spent treating, with this method, women who had become anuric following abortion manoeuvres resulting in septicaemia due to Clostridium perfringens - this was his first contact with kidney failure!

His clinical years oriented towards haematology and pediatrics, with a constant attraction to the laboratory. In 1948, he was sent, as a French trainee, to the Children's Hospital in Boston (Professors L. K Diamond and Sydney Farber) where he worked in one of the Harvard Medical School laboratories.

On his return to France, he took up work again at the regional Blood Transfusion Centre, where he immediately became interested in the new immuno-haematology techniques for red blood cells. He decided to transpose these techniques to white blood cells and platelets.

The principal observation of leuco-agglutination and thrombo-agglutination was made in 1952. Since that time, he has retained a constant interest in the immunogenetics of blood cells.

In 1958, while Head of the Immuno-haematology Laboratory at the National Blood Transfusion Centre, he described the first leucocyte antigen, MAC, which has become known as HLA-A2.

Preoccupied with the state of medical research in France, he undertook with Professor Robert Debré, to institute radical reforms in the hospital and university structures. This work as Advisor to the Cabinet of the National Ministry of Education, spanned three consecutive years and culminated in the introduction of a law which established full-time employment in French hospitals, introducing to the hospitals professors of basic sciences, who were given hospital responsibilities. This reform permitted a soar in French biology and brought a new lease of life to French medical research.

Despite the administrative struggles which ensued during this period, he never abandoned his laboratory work. In 1958, he was named Assistant Professor of Haematology at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, then Professor of Haematology in 1963 and was appointed Head of the Immunology Department at Hôpital Saint-Louis. Again, he devoted his time entirely to research and, in 1965, described the first tissue group system (Hu-1, later named HLA).

Thanks to the admirable volunteer blood donors, skin donors and skin recipients, grafted under the care of Professor F. T. Rapaport, correlations were established between graft survival and tissue incompatibility.

He participated in the creation of the Research Institute in Blood Diseases, directed by Professor Jean Bernard, and was Assistant Director there until 1968. One of the departments under his direction was the Research Unit on Immunogenetics of Human Transplantation, an INSERM (National Institute of Health and Medical Research) unit of which he has been director since 1968.

In 1977, the Collège de France called him to the Chair of Experimental Medicine, a position held by Claude Bernard from 1958 to 1978, but his research laboratory remained at Hôpital Saint-Louis.

In 1963, he married Rose Mayoral from Madrid who gave him two children, Henri and Irène.

In addition to his scientific interests, he has only two passions in life: his family and modern plastic art.

Professor Honoris Causa:
University of Brussels 1977
University of Geneva 1977
University of Liège 1980

Membership of Academies:
Honorary foreign member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine 1969
Académie des Sciences de l'Institut de France 1977
Académie de Médecine (Paris) 1977
Hon. Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston) 1979
Hon. Member, Yugoslavian Academy of Arts and Sciences (Zagreb) 1979

Prizes
Grand Prix des Sciences Chimiques et Naturelles (Académie des Sciences) 1967
Médaille d'Argent du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 1967
Grand Prix Scientifique de la Ville de Paris 1968
Prix Cognac-Jay (Académie des Sciences de l'Institut de France) 1969
Stratton Lecture Award (U.S.A.) 1970
Landsteiner Award AABB, San Francisco (U.S.A.) 1970
Gairdner Foundation Prize (Canada) 1977
Koch Foundation Prize (Germany) 1978
Wolf Foundation Prize (Israel) 1978

N.B. This biography was written in 1980 when Jean Dausset received the Nobel Prize. Since that time, he has created, in Paris, the Human Polymorphism Study Center (Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain, CEPH) and set up an intensive international collaboration to establish a genetic map of the human genome.

From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1971-1980.