http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/health/willy-burgdorfer-who-found-bacteria-that-cause-lyme-disease-is-dead-at-89.html 2014-11-20 06:01:43 Willy Burgdorfer, Who Found Bacteria That Cause Lyme Disease, Is Dead at 89 Dr. Burgdorfer’s familiar finding while conducting tick surgery solved the mysteries of an ailment that had affected scores of people. === Willy Burgdorfer, a medical entomologist who in 1982 identified the cause of what had been a mysterious affliction, The cause was complications of Lyme disease took its name from the Connecticut area where it first drew attention in the 1970s, including the towns of Lyme, Old Lyme and East Haddam. Scores of people in the area, particularly children, had developed Many of the children lived and played in wooded areas and developed rashes after being bitten by deer ticks. Cases were more prevalent east of the Connecticut River, where there were more deer. Many laboratory hours were devoted to determining if the deer ticks were spreading a virus. But no virus was detected. There had to be another explanation. Dr. Burgdorfer, who was born and educated in Basel, Switzerland, moved to Hamilton in 1951 to pursue his distinctive specialty: tick surgery, as he liked to call his meticulous method of dissecting ticks to study the diseases they spread. Hamilton, a small city in the Bitterroot Valley, had been home to a prominent laboratory for decades, after the discovery in 1906 that wood ticks in the region were transmitting In the early 1980s, Dr. Burgdorfer was analyzing deer ticks from Long Island that were suspected to have caused spotted “Once my eyes focused on these long, snakelike organisms, I recognized what I had seen a million times before: spirochetes,” he said in a 2001 oral history for the National Institutes of Health, which include the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He had not been working on Lyme disease, but he had spoken with the doctor who helped discover it, Dr. Allen Steere of Yale. After he saw the spirochetes in the Long Island ticks, he quickly realized that the bacteria might also be in the deer ticks believed to be playing a role in Lyme disease in Connecticut and elsewhere, including Long Island. Deer ticks had not been known to carry spirochetes, but more testing proved him right. In 1982, Dr. Burgdorfer sometimes said that his discovery was serendipitous — an accident that might have happened only to someone with more than three decades of experience in tick surgery. “Some people use the translated quote from Pasteur that says something like ‘chance favors the prepared mind,’ ” said Dr. Schwan, who is also a medical entomologist. “I heard that many times regarding Willy’s discovery.” Wilhelm Burgdorfer was born on June 27, 1925, to Karl and Else Burgdorfer. He received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Basel and the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel, where he specialized in zoology, parasitology and bacteriology. His survivors include his wife, Lois; his sons, Bill and Carl; two grandchildren; and a brother, Karl. His wife of more than 50 years, the former Gertrude See, known as Dale, died in 2005. Another influential Lyme disease expert, In 1951, Mr. Burgdorfer received a fellowship from the United States Public Health Service to work at the Hamilton lab. In the 30 years before he discovered the cause of Lyme disease, he spent much of his time studying Rocky Mountain spotted fever, relapsing fevers, plague and other diseases that can be spread by blood-feeding insects, including ticks, mosquitoes and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 300,000 people are found to have Lyme disease each year. A vast majority of reported cases are in the Northeast and the Midwest. Lyme disease can usually be treated successfully with There is still no cure, but knowing the role ticks play has prompted educational efforts about Lyme and other tick-borne diseases. When people learn how to recognize and remove ticks, Dr. Burgdorfer said in 2001, “then the chances of getting sick are not so great.” He retired in 1986. He won numerous awards as well as other forms of recognition. The bacterium that causes Lyme disease has been named in honor of him: Borrelia burgdorferi.