Background
Dr. Burgdorfer earned his Ph.D. in zoology, parasitology, and bacteriology from the University and from the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel.
As a research subject for his thesis he chose to study the development of the African relapsing fever spirochete, Borrelia duttonii in its tick vector Ornitnodoros moubata, and to evaluate this tick's efficiency in transmitting spirochetes during feeding on animal hosts. During his college years he was a member of a research team investigating outbreaks of Q fever in various parts of Switzerland and became interested in similar research activities carried out at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory (RML) in Hamilton, Montana, a U.S. National Institutes of Health research facility. He joined RML in 1952 as a Research Fellow, and later became a Research Associate in the USPHS's Visiting Scientist Program. In 1957, he became a U.S. citizen and shortly thereafter joined the RML staff as a Medical Entomologist.
Read more about this topic: Willy Burgdorfer
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