AP - PARIS

Jean Dausset, a Nobel prize-winning French immunologist and pioneer behind organ transplants and mapping of the human genome, has died. He was 92.

Dausset died of natural causes on June 6 in a hospital on the Spanish island of Mallorca, the French Health Ministry said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement calling Dausset a "great scientist."

Dausset's discovery in 1958 of the human leucocyte antigen (HLA) tissue system allowed doctors to verify compatibility between donor and receiver for an organ transplant.

"Thanks to this discovery, organ donations and transplants developed throughout the world, saving many lives," Sarkozy said.

Dausset was born in Toulouse Oct. 19, 1916. He had studied at a leading French medical school, the Faculte de medecine de Paris, before becoming a professor there. He founded France-Transplant and the Center for the Study of Human Polymorphism, which helped create a genetic and physical map of the human genome and localize genes responsible for genetic diseases.

In 1980, he shared the Nobel Prize for medicine with Americans George D. Snell and Baruj Benacerraf for their work on genetically determined structures on cell surfaces that regulate immunological reactions.