Jonas Salk

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American scientist, immunologist, biologist, and bacteriologist. Salk triumphed over his scientific colleagues when he developed the polio vaccine using a base of dead polio virus in 1953. He was a determined and dedicated humanitarian who refused to patent his vaccine, telling Edward R. Murrow "Could you patent the sun?" By 1969, the disease of polio had almost vanished in America. Parents and grandparents would stop the famous scientist and hero and thank him personally for his work. Salk never won a Nobel prize, was never elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was never embraced by the scientific establishment. Many believe that such honors were held back from Salk because, within the brotherhood of research, he committed the cardinal sin: he did not salute the colleagues before him who completed the ground-breaking research that helped lead to his achievements. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for Great Achievement in the field of medicine and younger immunologists regarded him as an elder statesman in the field and sought his advice. At 80, Salk was working on the eradication of AIDS with the same amount of determination Salk was the eldest of three boys of Russian Jewish immigrant parents. His father was a garment worker and his mother a homemaker. He grew up in humble beginnings in a New York City tenement, attending New York University medical school with the aid of scholarships. He received his medical degree on 6/08/1939. The practice of medicine never was his goal, but the study of biology and chemistry. He served a two-year internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. In 1942, he went to the University of Michigan to join the lab of his mentor, Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr. , where he spent the next six years researching the influenza virus. In 1947, Salk went to the University of Pittsburgh where he established his own research lab. The following year he went to work for the March of Dimes to investigate the eradication of the polio virus. He believed in a radical notion that an effective virus could be made from dead viruses as opposed to working with those which were live but neutralized. In 1952, there were more than 58,000 polio cases in the U.S. with 3,000 fatalities. Salk and his family were among the first volunteers for his vaccination. On 4/12/1955 at 10:20 AM the news release to the world read, "Salk vaccine is safe, effective and potent." The scientist became a hero to many Americans but earned scorn from his scientific peers, partly because of his refusal to earn a penny from his vaccine. His colleagues, off the record, wanted to play down his accomplishment. 1953 he established The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla. CA. The goal of the institution was to help other scientists reach their greatest potential. He lectured on college campuses and wrote books on biological science, receiving fan mail from people all over the world. He wrote a book about his own personal philosophy, "The Survival of the Wisest." Salk married his first wife, Donna Lindsey, on 6/08/1939. They had three sons, Peter, Darrell, and Jonathan. The couple divorced in 1968. He met French artist Françoise Gilot in California in 1970. Gilot, the former mistress of Pablo Picasso, is the mother of Claude and Paloma Picasso. The couple married on 6/29/1970 and became benefactors of several museums. Though Salk had a history of heart trouble, his death of congestive heart failure was unexpected on 6/23/1995, 12:23PM in La Jolla, CA. The man told children, "Live your dreams; before anything was a reality, it was a dream," and he said to the public, "There must be people ahead of their time." His mentor told him, "Damn it, Salk, why don't you do things the way everybody else does them?" Link to Wikipedia biography