Alan Perelson

Paper #: 90-005

The theoretical development of idiotypic networks was initiated by Jerne (1974a). In a review, Jerne (1974b) attempted to put the network proposal into mathematical terms. Before describing Jerne's and more modern efforts in detail, it is worth remembering what Jerne said about this endeavor. “Although this task is a challenge to immunologists, I suspect that several would rather turn away from such ambitious and, for the present, unrealistic exercises in order to contemplate what they would call real experimental facts. To those I would reply that as long as the quantitation of the immune response remains elusive, immunology will remain a phenomenology, an ever accumulating catalogue of such phenomena as are at present our daily bread.”

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