Research physician Harvey Alter dedicated his career to studies intended to ensure the safety of blood transfusions. In his research on viral hepatitis he co-discovered the so-called Australia antigen which proved to be the key to detecting the hepatitis B virus. He was the key scientist on the research that led to the discovery of hepatitis C in 1969. These findings provided to be a means to reducing reduce the incidence of hepatitis caused by blood transfusion caused hepatitis to near zero. More recently he was working on a DNA approach to vaccines. Alter came to the NIH in 1961 as a clinical associateClinical Associate. He then spent three years with at the Georgetown University Hospital. In 1969, he came back to NIH as a Senior Investigator in the clinical Clinical Center’s Department of Transfusion Medicine. He then became Chief of the Clinical Studies Section and, in 1987, Associate Director of Research in the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the NIH Clinical Center. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Lasker Award (200) and the Nobel Prize (2020).