Gajdusek's best-known work was on kuru. This disease was affecting many people among the South Fore people of New Guinea in the 1950s and 1960s. Gajdusek felt there was a connect between the spread of the disease and the funerary cannibalism by the South Fore people. He lived among the Fore and studied their language and culture. He also performed autopsies on people who died of kuru.