Must Know
American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. Born in New York to European immigrants. He proved that the polio virus could be grown in the laboratory in readily available human and monkey cells. After the polio virus ravaged the U.S. for decades, Salk developed a vaccine, which he successfully tried out on himself and his children. The development of the vaccine against polio lasted seven years and over 1.8 million schoolchildren took part in the field trial. In 1960 founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and spent his final years searching for a vaccine against HIV.
