Niels Kaj Jerne; Shared Nobel for Immune Theories

Niels Kaj Jerne, a London-born immunologist who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in medicine, has died at his home in southern France.

He was 82.

He died Friday in Castillon du Gard near Nimes, family members said.

Jerne shared the prize with Georg Koehler of Germany and Cesar Milstein of Britain for their theories on the structure and mechanism of commands of the immune system, and research on the production of monoclonal antibodies, which are components of the immune system.

Born in 1911 to Danish parents, Jerne studied medicine in Copenhagen, and biochemistry and immunology at Caltech in Pasadena and at the University of Pittsburgh.

He served as director of the Paul Erlich Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, and was the first director of the Immunology Institute of Basel from 1969 to 1983.

He also served as a counselor on molecular biology at the World Health Organization.