Virologist Max Essex is one of the leading figures in the scientific response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Essex has been a professor at Harvard for more than fifty years; he has chaired the Harvard AIDS Institute, the Botswana Harvard Partnership, and the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has authored more than seven hundred research papers as well as twelve books, including AIDS in Africa and Saturday Is for Funerals, and has fifteen patents and ten honorary doctoral degrees. Essex was a co-recipient of the Lasker Award, the highest award given for medical research in the US.