Byron Halsted Waksman

As the son of the nobel laureate Selman Abraham Waksman, Byron Halsted Waksman is an established in the field of multiple sclerosis and other inflammatory diseases as a faculty member at both Harvard and Yale Medical Schools. He later became an administrator and public spokesman for science. He was president of the American Association of Immunologists from 1970 to 1971 and vice president for research programs and medicine at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society from 1980 to 1989. Convinced that raising public awareness of science was key to securing the future of basic medical research, he founded and directed the Science Writing Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts (1990–1995), and the European Initiative for Communicators of Science program at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research near Munich (1992–1995).