Jacques Benveniste (; 12 March 1935 – 3 October 2004) was a French immunologist born in Paris. In 1979, he published a well-known paper on the structure of platelet-activating factor and its relationship with histamine. He was head of allergy and inflammation immunology at the French biomedical research agency INSERM. In 1988, Benveniste published a paper in Nature describing the action of very high dilutions of anti-IgE antibody on the degranulation of human basophils, findings that seemed to support the concept of homeopathy. After the article was published, a follow-up investigation was set up by a team including John Maddox, James Randi and Walter Stewart. With the cooperation of Benveniste's own team, the group failed to replicate the original results, and subsequent investigations did not support Benveniste's findings. Benveniste refused to retract, damaging his reputation and forcing him to fund research himself, as external sources of funding were withdrawn. In 1997, he founded the company DigiBio to "develop and commercialise applications of Digital Biology." Benveniste died in 2004 in Paris following heart surgery. Early career He qualified as a physician in 1960 and practised medicine in Paris before taking a research job in cancer at the Scripps Clinic in California. He returned to France in 1980, becoming the head of allergy and inflammation immunology at the French biomedical research agency INSERM (Institut de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale). He became a senior research director in 1984, but was placed under probation following a routine evaluation of his lab in 1989. Although INSERM found that his laboratory activities overall were exemplary, it expressed severe discomfort with his high dilution studies, and criticized him for "an insufficiently critical analysis of the results he reported, the cavalier character of the interpretations he made of them, and the abusive use of his scientific authority vis-à-vis his informing of the public". In 2002 he was made emeritus research director at INSERM. Platelet-activating factor Platelet-activating factor was discovered by Benveniste in the early 1970s. PAF was the first phospholipid known to have messenger functions. Benveniste made significant contributions in the role and characteristics of PAF and its importance in inflammatory response and mediation. Using lab rats and mice, he found that ionophore A23187 (a mobile ion carrier that allows the passage of Mn2+, Ca2+ and Mg2+ and has antibiotic properties against bacteria and fungi) caused the release of PAF. These developments led to the