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On 12–16 September, following an invitation of the Union of Religious Jewish Congregations in the Republic of Belarus, a Nobel Prize winner Stanley B. Prusiner (San Francisco, CA), visited our country. On September 15, 2009 he visited the Museum of Jewish History and Culture. During a couple of hours he was watching the exposition, then discussed some mutual projects with the Museum and left a record in the Visitor's Book:
«You have created a wonderful historical monument to the Jewish people who lived worked and prayed for centuries in the Pale of the Settlement. Your dedication to recording the lives of these extraordinary people is a mitzvah to all humanity. Our world needs to be constantly reminded of the atrocities that mankind seems to be able to commit so easily.
Thank you for all of your heart labour in documenting the fate of so many special people, many of whom created new communities of Jews in America and Israel.

All the very best,
Stanley Prusiner.»

Mr. Prusiner visited the places that are connected with the history of his family: Minsk, Shklov, Mogilev, Pruzhany, Mir.

In 1896 the scientist's great grandfather, a lawyer Volf Prusiner emigrated to the United States as a young boy from Moscow, because his family was evicted off the Jewish Pale. Later on it was found out that Volf Prusiner's ancestors lived in Belarusian towns Shklov and Pruzhany at the end of the 18th century.

«The scientist was impressed by the Belarusian nature, cleanliness of Minsk and other Belarusian towns, good roads», — said Bella Velikovskaya, director of the Union of Religious Jewish Congregations. Mr. Prusiner learned about the history of the Minsk Choral Synagogue whose building became a place for the National Academic Theatre named after Maxim Gorkiy, and he wondered why the Judaic sacred place older than 100 years doesn't have a memorial plaque on it telling the history of the building.

Prusiner Stenley

Since 1984 — Professor of Neurology, UCSF.

In 1997 Prusiner won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work proposing an explanation for the cause of bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow disease") and its human equivalent, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease; in this work, he coined the term prion, a class of previously undescribed form of infectious pathogens composed of protein causing cerebral affection (encephalopathy) of human–beings and animals. Prusiner's revolutionary discovery in virology has opened a new way towards treatment of before incurable diseases, including Alzheimer's Disease.

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