Peter C. Doherty was born to a piano teacher and a government employee in Brisbane, Australia, on October 15, 1940. A fine student, he earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Queens a year early. He went on to pursue a veterinary (agricultural) career, obtaining his B.V.Sc. from Queensland in 1962, and an M.V.Sc. in 1966.

Later, though, Doherty's career took an unexpected turn. By reading the books of Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, a countryman who had won the 1960 Nobel in medicine for his work on immune tolerance, Doherty became interested the immune system. Doherty went to the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, earning a Ph.D. there in 1970 for his studies of viral infection of sheep brains. In 1972 he returned to Australia as a research fellow at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, Canberra--setting the stage for his seminal discovery.

At the Curtin...