Harald zur Hausen, a German virologist awarded a Nobel Prize for groundbreaking work that found links between a common wart-causing virus and cervical cancer, leading to a vaccine that is considered highly effective but remains in relatively limited use worldwide, died May 29 at 87.

The German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, where Dr. zur Hausen had served as scientific director until 2003, announced the death but gave no further details.

The research led by Dr. zur Hausen into the human papillomavirus, or HPV, turned a theory that was once on the fringes of scientific acceptance into new fields of ontological study and potentially spared tens of thousands of people from getting cancer.

Dr. zur Hausen faced a wall of skepticism at the beginning. He “went against the current dogma,” said the 2008 announcement of the Nobel Prize in medicine, which Dr. zur Hausen shared with two French researchers for their work in identifying HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

As Dr. zur Hausen began his research in the 1970s, most cancer specialists believed cervical cancer was mostly triggered by factors such as hormones or heredity. Pap smears had made early detection possible and mortality rates were falling.