Thomas Milton Rivers

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Thomas M. Rivers' bronze bust in the Polio Hall of Fame

Thomas Milton Rivers (born September 3, 1888 in Jonesboro , Georgia , † May 12, 1962 in Forest Hills , New York ) was an American bacteriologist and virologist , the "father of modern virology".

biography

Born in Jonesboro, Georgia, Rivers first studied at Emory College in DeKalb County in the Atlanta area . In 1909 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and was admitted to the medical school of Johns Hopkins University . Due to neuromuscular degeneration, he was initially unable to realize his plans to become a doctor. He left university and worked as a laboratory assistant in a hospital in the Panama Canal Zone . When the disease had not worsened by 1912, he returned to Hopkins University, graduating in 1915 with a doctorate.

He stayed at the university until 1919 and then moved to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In 1922 he became head of the department of infectious diseases there, and from 1937 to 1956 he was director of the institute. In the 1930s and 1940s he helped make the institute a leading institution in the field of virus research. His work on rare neurological side effects of rabies vaccines in the 1930s established experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) in laboratory animals as an important animal model in experimental research on multiple sclerosis .

In 1933/1934 he served as President of the American Association of Immunologists . In 1934 he was accepted into the National Academy of Sciences in Section 10 ( Pathology and Microbiology ). Since 1942 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society . In the National Foundation for Polio he was chairman of the committee for research and vaccination advice and supervised the clinical vaccination trials of Jonas Salk .

Rivers served as a military doctor in both world wars. During World War II he headed the Navy's medical research department in the South Pacific and made it to the position of Rear Admiral .

In 1948, Rivers published a standard work on viral and rickettsial infections. In 1958 he was honored by induction into the Polio Hall of Fame in Warm Springs, Georgia .

Rivers was married to Teresa Jacobina Riefle from Baltimore . He died in Forest Hills, New York in 1962 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery because of his military rank .

literature

  • Saul Benison: Tom Rivers - Reflections on a Life in Medicine and Science . Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1967.
  • David Oshinsky : Polio: An American Story . Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-515294-8 .
  • FL Horsfall : Thomas Milton Rivers, September 3, 1888 – May 12, 1962 . In: Biographical memoirs . tape 38 . National Academy of Sciences (US), 1965, p. 163-194 .
  • RE Shope : Thomas Milton Rivers, 1888–1962 . In: Journal of Bacteriology . tape 84 , 1962, pp. 385-388 .

Web links

Commons : Thomas Milton Rivers  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Oshinsky : Polio: An American Story . Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-515294-8 , pp. 18 .
  2. ^ TM Rivers, FF Schwentker: Encephalomyelitis accompanied by myelin destruction experimentally produced in monkeys. In: Journal of Experimental Medicine. 61 (5) / 1935, pp. 689-702
  3. ^ HL Van Epps: Thomas Rivers and the EAE model. In: Journal of Experimental Medicine. 202 (1) / 2005, p. 4
  4. ^ Archives of NAS
  5. ^ Member History: Thomas M. Rivers. American Philosophical Society, accessed November 30, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Thomas M. Rivers (Ed.): Viral and Rickettsial Infections of Man . JB Lippincott Company, Philadelphia 1949.
  7. ^ Thomas Milton Rivers in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved September 4, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Rivers, Thomas Milton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rivers, Tom
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American bacteriologist and virologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Jonesboro , Georgia
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1962
Place of death Forest Hills , New York City