Stanley B. Prusiner, M.D. is a Professor of Neurology and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1994 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1997 for his discovery of prions, a class of infectious self-reproducing agents composed of protein.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Prusiner spent his childhood in Des Moines and Cincinnati, Ohio, where he attended Walnut Hills High School . Upon his graduation, Prusiner attended the University of Pennsylvania. Prusiner received both his undergraduate degree in Chemistry and his M.D. from Penn. Prusiner then completed an internship in medicine at UCSF. From there, Prusiner went to the National Institutes of Health, where he studied glutaminases in E. coli in the laboratory of Earl Stadtman. After three years at NIH, Prusiner returned to UCSF to complete a residency in Neurology. Upon completion of that residency in 1974, Prusiner joined the faculty of the Neurology department at UCSF. Since that time, Prusiner has held various faculty and visiting faculty positions at both UCSF and University of California, Berkeley.