Theodor Otto Diener is an American plant pathologist and was the first in the field to describe viroid

Viroid

Viroids are plant pathogens that consist of a short stretch of highly complementary, circular, single-stranded RNA without the protein coat that is typical for viruses. The smallest discovered is a 220 nucleobase scRNA associated with the rice yellow mottle sobemovirus...

s.

Biography

Diener was born in 1921 in Zurich, Switzerland. He came to the United States in 1949. In 1971 he showed that the causative agent of Potato spindle tuber disease was the potato spindle tuber viroid

Potato spindle tuber viroid

The Potato spindle tuber viroid was the first viroid to be identified. PSTVd is a small, circular RNA molecule closely related to the Chrysanthemum stunt viroid. Present within the viroidal RNA is the Pospiviroid RY motif stem loop. The natural hosts are potatoes and tomatoes...

 (PSTV). PSTV is a 130,000 dalton viroid. Viroids are very little single-stranded circular RNA that have no coat protein, and which do not code for any protein.

Diener received the prestigious National Medal of Science

National Medal of Science

The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and...

 in 1987 and the Wolf Prize in Agriculture

Wolf Prize in Agriculture

The Wolf Prize in Agriculture is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine, Physics and the Arts...

in 1987.