Introduction for P.H. Duesberg

Abstract

It is time now to introduce my friend Peter Duesberg. Where do I begin? At NIH, Peter is sometimes known as the battling bulldog. He gets his teeth into something and 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years later those teeth are still sunk in. I should be serious a bit, shouldn’t I? Peter, of course, was born here in Germany. He was educated at Tübingen and he came to the United States 20 years ago at the age of 27. I’ve known Peter now for about 15 years. When I first met him, he was already doing molecular virology, and I was already involved in retroviruses. Peter first began work on the molecular virology of Parainfluenza and influenza viruses. He was the first to show that Parainfluenza had a singular RNA genome and that influenza virus had multiple RNAs. This was the first time a virus was shown to have a segmented genome, thus explaining the rather distinctive ability of that virus to undergo frequent recombination by reassortment.