Sebastian Bonhoeffer

Among his many accomplishments in mathematical biology, Sebastian Bonhoeffer changed the way we think about the control of infectious disease. In the mid-1990s, perhaps the greatest puzzle in biology concerned why HIV-infected individuals had a long latent period without symptoms. Bonhoeffer's modeling of within-host HIV dynamics played a key role in showing that the virus was actually replicating rapidly but was temporarily controlled by host immunity. That unification of ecology with virology changed the treatment of AIDS and helped give rise to the influential field of mathematical modeling in the control of infection, a field that Bonhoeffer continues to lead.