Jonas Salk — virologist with roots in the Russian Empire
Jonas Edward Salk was born in New York City on 28 October 1914, the eldest of three sons of Daniel and Dora Salk. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through his mother.
Dora Salk, née Press, was born in Minsk and emigrated to the United States at the age of twelve. Daniel Salk was born in New Jersey to Jewish immigrant parents. Neither had much formal education, and Jonas was the first of the family to go to college. The family lived in East Harlem, then at Elsmere Place in the Bronx, with a spell in Arverne, Queens; his younger brothers were Herman and Lee, who became a child psychologist.
He went to a high school for gifted pupils and entered the City College of New York, intending to study law, before turning to medical science; he graduated in chemistry in 1934 and took his medical degree at New York University in 1939, then worked as a physician-scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital. In 1942 he went to the University of Michigan on a fellowship to work on an influenza vaccine with Thomas Francis Jr., his mentor from NYU, who taught him the methods of vaccine development.
In 1947 he moved to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and began research on polio, confirming that there were three types of the virus. He developed a vaccine made from killed virus, which he first gave to volunteers including himself, his laboratory scientist, his wife and their children. In 1954 national testing began on about a million children aged six to nine, and on 12 April 1955 the results were announced: the vaccine was safe and effective. By 1959 it had reached some ninety countries; Albert Sabin's live oral vaccine came into use in 1961.
In 1963 he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies at La Jolla, California, for research on diseases including multiple sclerosis and cancer, and he later wrote on wider questions, among them World Population and Human Values (1981).
He died at La Jolla on 23 June 1995, aged eighty.
Tracing the roots — Minsk (mother)
Born in New York City in 1914 to Daniel and Dora (née Press) Salk. His mother was born in Minsk and emigrated to the United States at the age of 12; his father was born in New Jersey to Jewish immigrant parents.
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Minsk (mother). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"Who owns the patent on this vaccine? The people. Could you patent the sun?"