Gian Franco Bottazzo

Gian Franco Bottazzo (1 August 1946 – 15 September 2017) was an Italian physician who spent most of his career in London. He was a prominent researcher in the field of diabetes and autoimmunity, and demonstrated that type 1 diabetes is associated with antibodies against beta cells.

Education and career Bottazzo was born in Venice in 1946, and attended medical school at the University of Padua. He was a keen footballer, and came close to joining Venezia F.C. before deciding to focus on his studies instead. As a medical student, he spent a summer at Middlesex Hospital in London under the tutelage of the immunologist Deborah Doniach. He graduated from Padua in 1971 and completed his training in allergy and clinical immunology at the University of Florence in 1974. The same year, Bottazzo and Doniach published a landmark paper in The Lancet showing that type 1 diabetes is associated with antibodies against insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, thus demonstrating the autoimmune nature of the disease.

Throughout his career, Bottazzo authored more than 300 research papers and 200 review articles and book chapters. He received the Banting Medal, the highest honour of the American Diabetes Association, in 1992.