Who discovered the hepatitis B surface antigen?

The hepatitis B virus has infected humans since at least the Bronze Age. According to the 2018 study, the viral genomes obtained by shotgun sequencing became the oldest ever recovered from vertebrate samples. It was also found that some ancient hepatitis viral strains still infect humans, while other became extinct. This disproved the belief that hepatitis B originated in the New World and spread to Europe around 16th century.

The earliest record of an epidemic caused by hepatitis B virus was made by Lurman in 1885. An outbreak of smallpox occurred in Bremen in 1883 and 1,289 shipyard employees were vaccinated with lymph from other people. After several weeks, and up to eight months later, 191 of the vaccinated workers became ill with jaundice and were diagnosed as suffering from serum hepatitis.

Later, numerous similar outbreaks were reported following the introduction, in 1909, of hypodermic needles that were used, and, more importantly, reused, for administering Salvarsan for the treatment of syphilis.

The virus was not discovered until 1966 when Baruch Blumberg, then working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), discovered the Australia antigen (later known to be hepatitis B surface antigen, or HBsAg) in the blood of Aboriginal Australian people. Although a virus had been suspected since the research published by Frederick MacCallum in 1947, David Dane and others discovered the virus particle in 1970 by electron microscopy.