Carlos Chagas

Carlos Ribeiro Justiniano Chagas was a Brazilian physician and scientist who discovered Chagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, a parasitic infection caused by Trypanosoma cruzi and transmitted by insects of the Triatominae subfamily. He was born in Oliveira, Minas Gerais, in 1879, and graduated in medicine at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1903. He worked as a sanitary physician and a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, where he studied malaria, yellow fever, and other tropical diseases. In 1909, he discovered the parasite that causes Chagas disease in the blood of a patient named Berenice, a three-year-old girl from Lassance, Minas Gerais. He also identified the insect vector, the reservoir hosts, the clinical manifestations, and the epidemiology of the disease, which affects millions of people in Latin America. He also discovered the parasite that causes pneumocystis pneumonia, a fungal infection that affects immunocompromised patients. He wrote several books and articles on parasitology, microbiology, and public health. He was a member and president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and the director of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine four times, but never received it. He died of heart failure in 1934, at the age of 55, in Rio de Janeiro. He is considered one of the most important and influential Brazilian physicians and scientists, and one of the main contributors to the development of tropical medicine.