Theodor Otto Diener
1921
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2023
photo credits: Wikimedia Commons
country of citizenship: United States of America
occupation: botanist, university teacher
award received: National Medal of Science, Wolf Prize in Agriculture
Theodor Otto Diener (28 February 1921 – 28 March 2023) was a Swiss-American plant pathologist. In 1971, he discovered that the causative agent of the potato spindle tuber disease is not a virus, but a novel agent, which consists solely of a short strand of single-stranded RNA without a protein capsid, eighty times smaller than the smallest viruses. He proposed to name it, and similar agents yet to be discovered, viroids. Viroids displaced viruses as the smallest known infectious agents. Source: Wikipedia (en)
Human - wd:Q2463965