In 1996, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1996 was awarded jointly to St. Jude’s Peter C. Doherty and Rolf M. Zinkernagel “for their discoveries concerning the specificity of the cell mediated immune defence.” Doherty was chair of St.ﾠJude Children’s Research Hospital was founded in 1962 by actor Danny Thomas.

Doherty currently splits his time between researching at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee and working in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne.