A Nobel laureate gave a presentation this week on the campus of the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

Harald zur Hausen, M.D., D.Sc., professor emeritus of the German Cancer Research Center, in Heidelberg, Germany, presented "Bovine Meat and Milk Factors as Potential Human Pathogens" on June 10 at the invitation of the Michael and Marian Ilitch Department of Surgery.

Dr. zur Hausen, a virologist, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008 for his discovery that human papillomavirus can cause cervical cancer. That distinction also earned him the Canada Gairdner International Award the same year.

His ground-breaking research in the 1970s and 1980s created the path for the development of the HPV vaccine in 2006.

Dr. zur Hausen also studied the Epstein-Barr virus, working with research teams that defined cancers in which the virus is found.

He studied medicine at Bonn, Hamburg and Düsseldorf universities, and worked at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and as a scientist at the Institute of Virology of the University of Wurzburg. He was named chair and professor of virology at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg in 1972, and in 1977 accepted a similar position at the University of Freiburg. From 1983 to 2003, he served as scientific director of the German Cancer Research Center, retiring in 2003.

He is an elected member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.