page_title: Willy Burgdorfer
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Willy Burgdorfer / Career
caption_attribution_description: Dr Willy Burgdorfer
context_page_description: Wilhelm "Willy" Burgdorfer was an American scientist born and educated in Basel, Switzerland, considered an international leader in the field of medical entomology. He discovered the bacterial pathogen that causes Lyme disease, a spirochete named Borrelia burgdorferi in his honor.
context_section_description: Burgdorfer's research concerned the interactions between animal and human disease agents and their transmitting arthropod vectors, particularly ticks, fleas and mosquitoes. His research contributions are published in more than 225 papers and books, and cover a wide field of investigations including those on relapsing fevers, plague, tularemia, Colorado tick fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and other bacterial and viral diseases.
  Burgdorfer gained worldwide recognition for his 1982 discovery of a tick-borne spirochete as the long-sought cause of Lyme disease and related disorders in the U.S. and Europe. The agent was named after him — Borrelia burgdorferi.
  Throughout his career, Burgdorfer participated in a number of World Health Organization (WHO) and other health organization-sponsored seminars and congresses.
  From 1967-1972, he served as Associate Member on the Rickettsial Commission of the Armed Forces Epidemiology Board. For several years (1968–1971) he was also Co-Project Officer of the PL 480-sponsored Research Project on Rickettsial Zoonoses in Egypt and adjacent areas, and from 1979 to 1986, he directed the WHO-sponsored Reference Center for Rickettsial Diseases at RML in Montana, U.S.
  Burgdorfer was critical of the path Lyme Disease research had taken over the past 30 years.  He believed Borrelia burgdorferi was a persistent infection, and that the current serological testing methodologies needed to be "started over from scratch, with people who don't know beforehand the results of their research."
caption: Burgdorfer in 1978
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