Carlos Chagas

Carlos Justiniano Ribeiro Chagas, was a Brazilian sanitary physician, scientist, and microbiologist who worked as a clinician and researcher. Best known for the discovery of an eponymous protozoal infection called Chagas disease, also called American trypanosomiasis, he also discovered the causative fungi of the pneumocystis pneumonia. He described the two pathogens in 1909, while he was working at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, and named the former Trypanosoma cruzi to honour his friend Oswaldo Cruz.