Max Essex

Myron Elmer "Max" Essex is the Mary Woodard Lasker Professor of Health Sciences, Emeritus in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard University, Chair of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health AIDS Initiative (HAI) in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, and Chair of the Botswana–Harvard AIDS Institute in Gaborone, Botswana. Essex was one of the first to link animal and human retroviruses to immunosuppressive disease, to suspect that a retrovirus was the cause of AIDS, and to determine that HIV could be transmitted through blood and blood products to hemophiliacs and recipients of blood transfusions. With collaborators, Essex also provided the first evidence that HIV could be transmitted by heterosexual intercourse.