During the 1990s England was plagued with cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) seen in cows, popularly known as "Mad Cow Disease." Then physicians in England started noticing an uptick in cases of what looked like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Will and Ironside noticed distinct pathological differences between classic CJD and what they called  variant CJD (vCJD). They then made the terrifying connection between it and ingestion of tainted beef, leading to panic in some regions and avoidance of beef consumption in others. In the process the wider public became aware of prion diseases. Order of authorship in the original publication was, Will, Ironside, Zeidler....

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)