33 Facts About Jonas Salk

Jonas Edward Salk was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines.

Jonas Salk was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine.

In 1947, Salk accepted a professorship at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he undertook a project beginning in 1948 to determine the number of different types of poliovirus.

Jonas Salk was immediately hailed as a "miracle worker" when the vaccine's success was first made public in April 1955, and chose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distribution.

Many countries began polio immunization campaigns using Jonas Salk's vaccine, including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium.

In 1963, Jonas Salk founded the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is today a center for medical and scientific research.

Jonas Salk continued to conduct research and publish books in his later years, focusing in his last years on the search for a vaccine against HIV.

Jonas Salk campaigned vigorously for mandatory vaccination throughout the rest of his life, calling the universal vaccination of children against disease a "moral commitment".

Jonas Salk was born in New York City to Daniel and Dora Salk.

Jonas Salk's parents were Jewish; Daniel was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents, and Dora, who was born in Minsk, emigrated to the United States when she was twelve.

Jonas Salk had two younger brothers, Herman and Lee, a child psychologist.

When he was 13, Jonas Salk entered Townsend Harris High School, a public school for intellectually gifted students.

Jonas Salk enrolled in CCNY, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1934.

Jonas Salk later focused more of his studies on bacteriology, which had replaced medicine as his primary interest.

Jonas Salk said his desire was to help humankind in general rather than single patients.

In 1941, during his postgraduate work in virology, Jonas Salk chose a two-month elective to work in the Thomas Francis' laboratory at the University of Michigan.

Jonas Salk then worked at the University of Michigan School of Public Health with Francis, on an army-commissioned project in Michigan to develop an influenza vaccine.

In 1947, Jonas Salk became ambitious for his own lab and was granted one at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, but the lab was smaller than he had hoped, and he found the rules imposed by the university restrictive.

Jonas Salk asked Salk to find out if there were more types of polio than the three then known and offered additional space, equipment and researchers.

Jonas Salk later joined the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis's polio project established by President Franklin D Roosevelt.

Jonas Salk decided to use what he believed to be the safer "killed" virus, instead of weakened forms of strains of polio viruses like the ones used contemporaneously by Albert Sabin, who was developing an oral vaccine.

Jonas Salk preferred not to have his career as a scientist affected by too much personal attention, as he had always tried to remain independent and private in his research and life, but this proved to be impossible.

Scientists and journalists who regularly dealt with Jonas Salk would come to see him in more human terms, but many still initially approached him with the same drop-jawed wonder, as though some of the stardust might rub off.

Jonas Salk enjoys talking to people he likes, and "he likes a lot of people", wrote the Times.

The New York Times, in a 1980 article celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Jonas Salk vaccine, described the current workings at the facility, reporting:.

At the institute, a magnificent complex of laboratories and study units set on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, Dr Jonas Salk holds the titles of founding director and resident fellow.

Jonas Salk cofounded The Immune Response Corporation with Kevin Kimberlin and patented Remune, an immunologic therapy, but was unable to secure liability insurance for the product.

Jonas Salk said people must be prepared to take prudent risks, since "a risk-free society would become a dead-end society" without progress.

Just prior to his death, Jonas Salk was working on a new book along the theme of biophilosophy, privately reported to be titled Millennium of the Mind.

The day after his graduation from medical school in 1939, Jonas Salk married Donna Lindsay, a master's candidate at the New York College of Social Work.

In 1968, they divorced and, in 1970, Jonas Salk married French painter Francoise Gilot.

On June 23,1995, Jonas Salk died from heart failure at the age of 80 in La Jolla, and was buried at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego.

Dr Jonas Salk's achievement is meritorious service of the highest magnitude and dimension for the commonwealth, the country and mankind.