Jonas Salk

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Jonas Edward Salk (born October 28, 1914 in New York City , † June 23, 1995 in La Jolla , California ) was an American doctor and immunologist . He developed the inactivated polio vaccine against polio (polio).

Jonas Salk (1988)
Jonas Salk signature.svg

Private life and family background

Jonas Salk was born in New York City to the Russian-Jewish parents Daniel and Dora Salk. The family lived first in East Harlem , then in the Bronx, and finally in Queens . The father was a dressmaker and wanted to give his three sons a good education.

Jonas Salk had been married since 1939 and had three sons. The marriage ended in divorce in 1968, and in 1970 Salk married Françoise Gilot , Pablo Picasso's former lover .

Salk died on June 23, 1995 in La Jolla, California. He was buried in the El Camino Memorial Park Cemetery in San Diego .

Education

High school and college

At the age of 12, Salk entered Townsend Harris High School, a private school for gifted students that required students to complete four years of work in three years. Even then, Salk was considered a perfectionist who read everything he could get his hands on. For the successful students, the successful completion of the school was the entry into the City College of New York (CCNY)

Salk enrolled there at the age of 15 in September 1930 at the height of the global economic crisis. At the urging of his mother, he gave up plans to become a lawyer and concentrated on courses that were necessary as a prerequisite for medical school. Although the college's equipment was very poor (no research laboratories, a very incomplete library, few prominent faculty), Salk graduated as one of the best students with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and received a scholarship to study medicine at New York University .

Medical degree

He soon decided not to become a practicing doctor, but to devote himself to research. He even paused a year from medical school to study biochemistry, later focusing primarily on bacteriology as his interest, he said, was more focused on helping humanity as a whole as an individual patient. Laboratory work gave his life a new direction. In the senior year of his medical school, he volunteered for two months in the laboratory of Thomas Francis Jr. , who had recently joined the medical school after working for the Rockefeller Foundation and discovering the B-type influenza virus . Salk was introduced to the world of virology through Francis and he "bit himself tight". In 1939 he received his doctorate in medicine ( Medical Doctor ).

Work as a doctor and researcher

Resident at Mount Sinai Hospital

After completing his medical degree, Salk began working as an assistant doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York in 1939 , where he again worked in Francis' laboratory. Although he mainly focused on research, he also demonstrated "tremendous skill as a clinician and surgeon".
In 1941, Salk ended his assistantship at Mount Sinai and received a grant from the National Research Council on the mediation of Francis, who had meanwhile gone to the University of Michigan . Meanwhile the US was at war and Salk should have accepted a post as a military doctor, but Thomas Francis managed to reclaim him as an "important researcher in an area that was of paramount importance to the national defense," so Salk in the spring 1942 could start work in Ann Arbor .

Developed the influenza vaccine with Thomas Francis

He and Francis developed an influenza vaccine that was soon widely used on army bases, with Salk "being responsible for the discovery and isolation of a strain of influenza that was used in the final vaccination."

Move to Pittsburgh - start of polio research

In 1947, Salk decided to look for an institute where he could run his own laboratory. After three rejections, he received an offer from William McEllroy, Dean of the University of Pittsburgh Medical School . Salk accepted and in the fall of 1947 he left Michigan and moved to Pennsylvania . Although the facility he found fell far short of his expectations - poorly equipped rooms in the basement of the old Municipal Hospital - Salk saw a challenge and sought more space, financial support, and recognition. He presented the dean with a work plan for his planned research: he wanted to focus on polio , influenza , measles and colds. He was initially a novice in the field of poliomyelitis , but he knew that researchers in this area could hope for support from the generous National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis .

In Pittsburgh, Salk was the first to develop an effective vaccine against polio (poliomyelitis) caused by viruses , which he first tested on himself and his family. It was a dead vaccine in which the polioviruses were killed with formalin . By inactivating the viruses, infection of the vaccinated people and possible spread of the disease could be excluded.

Successful fight against polio

In the subsequent US vaccination study, which was then the largest with more than a million participants, Salk was able to prove that functional vaccines can not only be produced from weakened - i.e. still infectious - viruses . The most important publication of the results of this work appeared in 1955. - Shortly after the release, Salk surprised the public on April 12, 1955 in an interview when asked who the patent belongs to, "Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun? " ("Well, I would say humans. There is no patent. Could the sun be patented?") - Within a short time, the spread of polio in the USA has been reduced to a fifth and today the disease is almost eradicated in industrialized nations . This success is, however, also due to the oral vaccination developed by Albert Sabin , which has the great advantage that it is used orally and does not have to be injected as with Salk's vaccine . However, the oral vaccination , which is more popular because it is easier to administer and at the same time provides more effective protection, is a live vaccine with weakened viruses, which also carries some risks.

Founding of your own institute

Salk later decided to found his own scientific institute. The campus , which was started in 1962 and designed by the architect Louis Kahn , opened in 1967 in La Jolla, a suburb of San Diego (California). Salk was the first director of the institute. Today the Salk Institute for Biological Studies is an internationally renowned biomedical research center.

Salks vaccination attempts against HIV

In the last few years of his life, Salk tried to develop an HIV vaccine. In 1987 Salk founded the pharmaceutical company IRC (Immune Response Corporation) to research an experimental vaccine that should enhance the immune response in HIV infection. The vaccine became known as HIV-1 immunogenic, "Salk vaccine", and AG1661. The planned trade name was Remune , which name also became public. After his death, the IRC was taken over by Pfizer . Development was discontinued in 1999 due to lack of effectiveness.

Private life

Jonas Salk had been married to Donna Lindsay since 1939 and had three sons: Peter, Darrell and Lee. In 1968 they divorced and in 1970 Salk married Françoise Gilot , Pablo Picasso's former lover .

Salk died on June 23, 1995 in La Jolla, California. He was buried in the El Camino Memorial Park Cemetery in San Diego .

Honors

Fonts

  • Man unfolding. (1972)
  • Survival of the Wisest (1973) German: We can survive. Herder, Freiburg (im Breisgau), Basel, Vienna 1975, ISBN 3-451-17234-8 .
  • World Population and Human Values: A New Reality. (1981)
  • Anatomy of Reality. (1983)

literature

  • David M. Oshinsky: Polio: An American Story . Oxford University Press, USA, 2005, ISBN 0-19-530714-3 .
  • Bookchin, Debbie, and Schumacher, Jim: The Virus and the Vaccine . Macmillan, 2004, ISBN 978-0-312-34272-2 .

Web links

Commons : Jonas Salk  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jonas Salk in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 8, 2015.
  2. ↑ Bookchin p. 25
  3. ^ Oshinsky, p. 100
  4. ↑ Oshinsky p. 101
  5. ↑ Bookchin p. 26
  6. ^ Once Again, A MAN WITH A MISSION , nytimes.com, November 25, 1990
  7. ↑ He drove polio out of mankind , welt.de of October 14, 2014
  8. ^ Jonas Salk in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 8, 2015.
  9. ^ "Salk is Honored by Pennsylvania" New York Times, May 11, 1955
  10. ↑ " http://www.medaloffreedom.com/JonasSalk.htm Report on the award
  11. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of March 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) report here
  12. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20080928015726/http://www.californiamuseum.org/Exhibits/Hall-of-Fame/inductees.html report here
personal data
SURNAME Salk, Jonas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Salk, Jonas Edward (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American doctor and immunologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH June 23, 1995
Place of death La Jolla , California