Ruth Sonntag Nussenzweig

In 1967, Dr. Nussenzweig demonstrated that mice could acquire immunity to the Plasmodium berghei parasite. She did so by exposing the mice to P. berghei sporozoites that had been inactivated by X-ray irradiation.

In 1965, the Nussenzweigs returned to São Paulo, and found that working conditions had become untenable since the 1964 military coup; many of their friends and colleagues had been jailed by the regime, and Victor was singled out for questioning by the School's new military administration. Through the intervention of Baruj Benacerraf, both Nussenzweigs obtained Assistant Professorships at NYU, and moved permanently to the United States. Dr. Nussenzweig returned briefly to Brazil to defend her doctoral thesis, earning her Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo in 1968.

Dr. Nussenzweig was born Ruth Sonntag in Vienna, Austria, to a secular Jewish family in which both of her parents were physicians. In 1939, after the Anschluss, the Sonntags fled to São Paulo, Brazil. While attending the University of São Paulo School of Medicine, she became involved in leftist politics and met Victor Nussenzweig, her future husband and lifelong research partner. After receiving her M.D., Nussenzweig moved to Paris for a research fellowship. In 1963, she did further graduate work at the NYU laboratory of immunologist Zoltán Óváry.

Ruth Sonntag Nussenzweig (20 June 1928 – 1 April 2018) was an Austrian-Brazilian immunologist specializing in the development of malaria vaccines. In a career spanning over 60 years, she was primarily affiliated with New York University (NYU). She served as C.V. Starr Professor of Medical and Molecular Parasitology at Langone Medical Center, Research Professor at the NYU Department of Pathology, and finally Professor Emerita of Microbiology and Pathology at the NYU Department of Microbiology.