“Major advances in science are usually launched by new methods and techniques…Happily, the history of biology teaches us that methods and techniques that today exist only in our imagination will materialize in some unexpected way.”
Dr. Charles Weissmann, M.D., Ph.D.
When the institute launched in 2004, its first scientific hires included the institute’s current scientific director, Patrick Griffin, Ph.D., and the eminent Hungarian-Swiss molecular biologist Charles Weissmann, M.D.,Ph.D.
Dr. Weissmann chaired the Scripps Florida Infectology Department until his retirement in 2012. Sadly, Dr. Weissmann passed away in Switzerland on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. He was 94.
A Lasting Impact on Florida Research
While at Scripps Florida, now called The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology, Dr. Weissmann and his research team made major discoveries about prions, the infectious agent known for causing so-called “mad cow disease,” bovine spongiform encephalopathy, as well as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and scrapie. His team found that prions experienced evolution, mutation and Darwinian selection in cultured cells, though they were devoid of a genome. The discovery was described in the journal Science on December 31, 2009.
Dr. Weissmann’s influence on our campus was profound, and it can be felt and seen in many places to this day.
Long before CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing was discovered, he advanced methods for creating specific mutations in genetic material by employing phages, viruses that infect bacteria.
He was known for keeping a demanding schedule, expecting his lab members to attend weekly early morning meetings to discuss their experiments. He recruited experts in genetics, cell and mouse biology, engaging them in his passion for inventing novel methods for probing and perturbing genetic material, on a quest to understand its function and role in health and disease.
In addition to being an innovative and hard-working scientist, Dr. Weissmann was an expert art collector. Dr. Weissmann commissioned and donated the elaborate sculpture in the front of our headquarters, created by the German scientist-artist Julian Voss-Andreae. The artwork represents the structure of an antibody surrounded by a circle, echoing Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Titled “Angel of the West,” the sculpture was dedicated to Scripps Florida founder Dr. Richard Lerner, M.D., to recognize Dr. Lerner’s discoveries in therapeutic antibody engineering, which helped lead to development of Humira and other biologics.
Before joining Scripps Florida, Dr. Weissmann had been a scientist at University College, London. He had founded the Institute for Molecular Biology in Zurich, however he was forced to move his science abroad when Swiss law forced him to retire at age 67. While in London, Dr. Lerner and then-Governor Jeb Bush invited him to help create a new Florida home for “some of the best science in the world.”
In his self-published memoirs, “Book of Vignettes & Book of More Vignettes,” Weissmann recalled how a Scripps Research scientist and fellow Roche alumnus, Tamas Bartfai, Ph.D., visited him in London in 2003.
“Not long after this meeting, I received a call from Richard Lerner himself, asking me if I would join the scientific board of Scripps. Never averse to flattering invitations, I readily agreed, whereupon Richard added something like, ‘Oh, by the way, would you be interested in heading a Scripps institute in Florida?’ Wow. Would I.”
A visit to Palm Beach with his wife, Juliette, sealed the deal, although the offer morphed into department head, “a stroke of luck, considering my administrative limitations,” Dr. Weissmann quipped with his typical self-deprecating wit.
“We’re proud he will call our state home. His hiring is symbolic of the caliber of individuals we’ll recruit to Scripps Florida,” Bush said in a 2004 news release announcing Dr. Weissmann’s recruitment here.
Dr. Weissmann was both an exceptional scientist and an impressive businessman, recalled Douglas Bingham, a co-founder of the Florida branch of Scripps Research, and its former site head.
“He was exactly the scientist we needed to establish the world-class level of research that we envisioned for Scripps Florida,” Bingham said.
Dr. Weissmann had served as a member of the board of directors at Hoffman La Roche, and in 1978 was co-founder and scientific advisor to one of the world’s first biotechnology companies, Biogen. He will be most remembered for inventing methods for cloning and expressing interferon-alpha 2 for use as a medicine. For many years, it was the primary treatment for hepatitis C and some rare cancers. He will also be remembered for his contributions to the discovery of the highly infectious nature of prions. Dr. Weissmann was thus conferred many awards. He was a Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a member of the Royal Society (UK) and the Orden pour le Mérite (Germany).
A voracious student, Dr. Weissmann spoke many languages fluently. He attended the University of Zurich and obtained his M.D. in 1956 and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1961. His postdoctoral work took place in the laboratory of Severo Ochoa at New York University.
Born in Hungary, his family had moved to Switzerland while he was an infant. When he was 9 years old, Adolf Hitler attacked Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Suddenly no place in Europe felt safe for a Jewish family, he wrote in his memoirs. Weissmann’s family fled to Paris and then Lisbon, seeking refugee status, narrowly missing the Nazis’ arrival in Paris by a few days. “As it was impossible to secure a U.S. visa, my family settled on Brazil as a refuge,” he wrote. He spent his adolescence in Rio de Janeiro, returning to Zurich after the war.
His love for science permeates his memoirs, which are filled with fond recollections of historic advances that enabled new discoveries, such as the discovery of radioactive isotopes as a scientific tool, the discovery of stem cells, and the advent of genomic sequencing.
“Major advances in science are usually launched by new methods and techniques…Happily, the history of biology teaches us that methods and techniques that today exist only in our imagination will materialize in some unexpected way,” he wrote. He challenged future scientists to predict cellular processes and regulation as a function of their environment, and to trace the neuronal processes underlying invention. He is survived by his loving spouse Juliette, and a legacy of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
For his scientific insights, his many intellectual gifts, his wit and his passion for science, Dr. Weissmann will be long remembered and missed.
Special thanks to Dr. Weissmann’s longtime administrative assistant, Marilena Fernandez, for sharing her memories and her copy of Dr. Weissmann’s memoirs.