Stephen Malawista, one of the discoverers of Lyme disease, died Wednesday at age 79.

Malawista and his research team are credited with discovering Lyme disease in the 1970s and with helping to show that the tick-borne illness could be treated with antibiotics.

The first cases occurred in the Connecticut towns of Lyme and Old Lyme — hence the name — and were at first diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis, but Dr. Malawista and his team showed that there was a link between ticks and the disease.

The United States Centers for Disease Control recently estimated that there are more than 300,000 cases of Lyme Disease in the U.S. each year.

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