A scientist dedicated to helping the whole of humanity.  

Jonas Salk was born in New York in 1914 to a second-generation American Jewish father and a Jewish mother who had immigrated from Russia. Although neither of his parents received much education, both he and his brothers were encouraged in their intellectual pursuits.  Salk started at Townsend Harris High School, a New York public school for gifted students, at the age of 13.  The curriculum was rigorous, squeezing four years of study into three years. To his fellow students, Salk was known as a perfectionist and as a student who was an avid reader.  At the age of 15 he went to the highly competitive City College of New York, from which he graduated with a degree in chemistry in 1934, at age 19.  He went on to study medicine at New York University whose medical school, unlike many of the top surrounding medical schools, did not have quotas limiting the number of Jewish students. He stood out from his fellow medical students not only because of his academic gifts, but also because he did not want to practice medicine.  Instead, he wanted to be a medical scientist. As he put it, his desire “was to be of some help to humankind, so to speak, in a larger sense than just on a one-to-one basis.” [1]

Following medical school, Salk began a residency at Mount Sinai Hospital, but spent time doing research, rather than as a clinician.  Working at the University of Michigan with Thomas Francis, who first isolated an influenza virus, Salk and Francis developed an influenza vaccine that became widely used in army bases.  Salik himself discovered and isolated one of the influenza strains that were ultimately included in the vaccine.

In 1947 Salk took up a position at the University of Pittsburgh, where he put together a team to investigate polio. Poliomyelitis, commonly referred to as polio, is a highly infectious disease in humans caused by the poliovirus.  Although 75% of infections are asymptomatic, more serious symptoms include headache and paresthesia, paralysis and possibly death.  Recovery from infection can be slow, with the development of muscle weakness.  There was no treatment for polio and its effects on the individual could be traumatic.  One quarter of the patients who contract spinal polio suffer from severe disability, while 5% to 10% of patients with paralytic polio die due to paralysis of the muscles used for breathing if respiratory support is not given.  It is difficult for us to imagine it now, but the mention of polio could be a nightmare for parents in the mid-20^th century.

Salk’s work was supported by the Mellon Family and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (later to be renamed the March of Dimes). Unlike others, who were developing a vaccine based on weakened live vaccines, he believed that a vaccine using a “killed” virus would prove to be effective and safer.  After successful laboratory tests in 1952, the vaccine was tested in a small number of children in 1953, including his own, and then in about one million children in 1954.  The following year the vaccine was announced as being safe and effective, opening the door to the virtual elimination of a childhood disease that affected millions around the world. Salk did not apply for patent protection on his vaccine.  Whether that was because he believed that the vaccine should be widely accessible, or whether there was a decision not to apply because of disqualifying prior art, remains a point for the historians to debate.

Salk’s success launched him into the public’s eye.  He was no longer a scientist working in a lab, he was now a public figure, a status he never felt comfortable with.  Many supporters, including the National Science Foundation, encouraged him to build a research institute for the investigation of biological phenomena ‘from cell to society.’ The Salk Institute for Biological Studies opened in a purpose-built facility in La Jolla, across the street from the University of California at San Diego, in 1962. The Salk Institute has since become one of the leading biological research centers in the world.

Salk received many prizes and honors throughout his life, including the Lasker Award in 1956, the Congressional Gold Medal in 1975 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.  He died from heart failure in 1995 at the age of 80.

Author: Iain A. McIntyre