Jeffrey Jon Shaw

During World War II he was evacuated and spent his early childhood in the village of Rothley, Leicestershire, whose surrounding countryside became his playground and fostered his love of nature. When the war ended, he returned to Kent, living there until he went to university in London. Since 1965 he has lived and worked in Brazil. Amongst his hobbies are a love of classical music and sailing. He continues to sail and participate in championships. There is a yearly Snipe class trophy in his name at the Brasília Yacht club.

He gained a BSc in Zoology in 1960 at London University's Queen Mary College (now Queen Mary University) of London and a PhD in 1964 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine under the guidance of Percy Cyril Garnham and Cecil Hoare. The field work for his doctoral thesis on the life cycle of Endotrypaum was performed in Central America in 1962 with Wellcome Trust support.

He contracted cutaneous leishmaniasis there; this motivated his lifelong interest in the disease. In the early 1960s, he and his colleague Alister Voller pioneered the use of indirect immunofluorescent techniques for the diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis and Chagas Disease. In 1977 he was awarded a DSc at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 1965 he and Ralph Lainson moved to Belém, Brazil where they founded the Wellcome Parasitology Unit. In 1994 he became a tenured senior professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) and has continued there until the present time.

Jeffrey Jon Shaw OBE, FLS, FASTMH (born 12 July 1938) is a British parasitologist who began working in Latin America in 1962. Although officially retired, he is presently Senior Professor at São Paulo University's Biomedical Sciences Institute where he continues his research in its Parasitology Department.