Dausset received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1980 along with Baruj Benacerraf and George Davis Snell for their discovery and characterisation of the genes making the major histocompatibility complex.

Using the money from his Nobel Prize and a grant from the French Television, Dausset founded the Human Polymorphism Study Center (CEPH) in 1984, which was later renamed the Foundation Jean Dausset-CEPH in his honour.

Dausset failed to pass an internship entrance exam at the Paris Hospitals, and was preparing for a second attempt when World War II broke out.

As the war was winding down in 1944, Dausset returned to Paris where he worked in the Regional Blood Transfusion Center at the Saint-Antoine Hospital.

After the war, Dausset worked as an intern at the Paris Hospitals, which were in a state of disrepair and badly needed structural reform.

The physician Robert Debré worked with Dausset, and pushed the government into forming a committee for the reform of medical education.

During this time, Dausset performed blood transfusions between a voluntary donor and patients in order to further his research in the field of immune responses in the body.

From 1960 to 1965 Dausset worked primarily on improving organ transplantation techniques and the mechanisms involved in enhancing the body’s ability to accept the new tissue.

During this time, Dausset worked with Paul Ivany in Prague and they used leuco-agglutination and lymphocyte toxicity techniques to make some very significant discoveries.

This is when he discovered the HLA system, with Felix Rapaport; by performing skin transplant experiments on volunteers and showed that success depended on histocompatibility.

Dausset began his research shortly after obtaining his medical degree in 1945, while working as an intern in the hematology lab at the Children’s Hospital in Boston.

In 1952 he returned to France and continued his research, particularly focusing on hemolytic anemia, and publishing several works dealing with various forms of blood cell agglutination.

It was during this period of research, in 1954, when Dausset first observed an anti-leucocyte agglutinating substance, though it was not until 1958 that he identified an isoantibody specific to leucocytes, and published his findings.

His next paper on the subject was published in 1964, when he observed a clear relationship between leucocyte antigen compatibility and antibody response to skin grafts.

Following 1967, Dausset participated in numerous other studies pertaining to the complex (which was renamed HLA in 1968), particularly those examining the genetic basis for the antigens’ transmission, along with publishing a number of other papers for which he claimed primary authorship.

For his contribution to these studies as well as his ultimate role in the discovery of this crucial antigen, Jean Dausset received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1980.

In 1984 Dausset founded the Centre D’étude du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH), aiming to detect the major genes in humans that are responsible for diseases outside the HLA system.

The CEPH system contributed DNA from 61 large families to international centers that were responsible for mapping the human genome.