Stanley Prusiner

Stanley Prusiner is an American biochemist and neurologist. While he currently works as the director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at UCSF, his biggest claim to fame is receiving the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for his work and research in Mad Cow Disease and CJD. Prusiner was the first to discover and coin the term "prion." 

An interesting autobiography can be found: ^{http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1997/prusiner-autobio.html}