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Jonas Salk 1914 - 1995

Jonas Salk of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA was born on October 28, 1914 in New York City, NY, and died at age 80 years old on June 23, 1995 at La Jolla in San Diego, San Diego County, California United States. Jonas Salk was buried at El Camino Memorial Park 5600 Carroll Canyon Rd, in San Diego.

Jonas Salk

Jonas Edward Salk

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA 90049

October 28, 1914

New York City, NY

June 23, 1995

La Jolla in San Diego, San Diego County, California, United States

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Jonas Salk's History: 1914 - 1995

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Introduction

Jonas Edward Salk was born October 28, 1914 in New York City, the eldest of three sons to Russian-Jewish immigrants Daniel and Dora Salk. The first member of his family to attend college, he earned his medical degree from the New York University School of Medicine in 1939 and became a scientist physician at Mount Sinai Hospital. In 1942, Salk went to the University of Michigan on a research fellowship to develop an influenza vaccine. He soon advanced to the position of assistant professor of epidemiology. He also reconnected with his NYU friend and mentor, Thomas Francis, Jr., head of the epidemiology department at Michigan’s new School of Public Health, who taught him the methodology of vaccine development. In 1947, Salk was appointed director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. With funding from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis—now known as the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation—he began to develop the techniques that would lead to a vaccine to wipe out the most frightening scourge of the time: paralytic poliomyelitis. Contrary to the era’s prevailing scientific opinion, Salk believed his vaccine, composed of “killed” polio virus, could immunize without risk of infecting the patient. Salk administered the vaccine to volunteers who had not had polio, including himself, his lab scientist, his wife and their children. All developed anti-polio antibodies and experienced no negative reactions to the vaccine. In 1954, national testing began on one million children, ages six to nine, who became known as the Polio Pioneers. On April 12, 1955, the results were announced: the vaccine was safe and effective. In the two years before the vaccine was widely available, the average number of polio cases in the U.S. was more than 45,000. By 1962, that number had dropped to 910. Hailed as a miracle worker, Salk never patented the vaccine or earned any money from his discovery, preferring it be distributed as widely as possible. Founding the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla in 1963 was Salk’s second triumph. He was aided with a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation and support from the March of Dimes. Salk spent his last years searching for a vaccine against AIDS. He died on June 23, 1995 at the age of 80 in La Jolla, California. His life’s philosophy is memorialized at the Institute with his now famous quote: “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality."
10/28

1914

Birthday

October 28, 1914

Birthdate

New York City, NY

Birthplace

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Early Life & Education

The first member of his family who went to college, he originally enrolled in the City College of New York to study law, but changed his field to medicine. While he was attending New York University's medical school he spent his efforts researching the influenza virus and became fascinated with it.
Professional Career

Medical pioneer, he is known for his critical role in developing an effective polio vaccine.
Personal Life & Family

Salk developed the polio vaccine and refused to patent it. He wanted to make the vaccine available to as many people as possible and did not want to personally profit from his breakthrough. In 1963, with a twenty million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation and support from the March of Dimes, he founded the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies that conducts revolutionary scientific and medical research.
06/23

1995

Death

June 23, 1995

Death date

Unknown
Cause of death

La Jolla in San Diego, San Diego County, California United States
Death location

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Gravesite & Burial

mm/dd/yyyy
Funeral date
El Camino Memorial Park 5600 Carroll Canyon Rd, in San Diego, San Diego County, California 92121, United States
Burial location
Obituary

Obituary: End Of An Era: Polio Vaccine Pioneer Jonas Salk Dies Jul 24, 1995 Millions of people around the world probably best recognize the name of Jonas Salk - who died at age 80 of congestive heart failure on June 23 in La Jolla, Calif. - as that of the discoverer of the first successful polio vaccine. But various scientists and physicians say that they will remember the pioneering researcher in equal measure for his passion and vision in everything he undertook. Jonas Salk AHEAD OF HIS TIME: Colleagues remember Jonas Salk for carrying the courage of his scientific convictions. Referring to Salk's work both with the polio vaccine and, in later years, with the AIDS vaccine, Donald Francis, formerly an official of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and now a clinical scientist at Genentech Inc. in South San Francisco, Calif., avows, "Jonas was - in his own words - a change agent ahead of his time. "He had a wonderful spirit in the face of the most daunting circumstances," adds the AIDS researcher, whose personal association with Salk dates to the 1980s, when Francis was CDC's AIDS adviser for the state of California. "Once he had an idea, he wouldn't listen to the naysayers." "Jonas brought his own personal style and passion into whatever he did," concurs David Schwartz, an assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University. "No meeting could ever be dull if he were around." In approaching the problem of AIDS, he says that Salk "was ahead of the times: While most people were looking at just the outer envelope of the virus in order to produce vaccines, he got people to thinking about looking at the whole virus and all its proteins." Salk was also instrumental in "stirring discussion and reinvigorating the concept of therapeutic vaccines against AIDS" in addition to preventive vaccines, adds Schwartz. It was this same far-sightedness during the late 1940s and 1950s that led him to develop the polio vaccine. While the prevailing trend among researchers was to use live but weakened forms of the infectious agent to vaccinate against a disease, Salk attempted to induce immunity to polio with "killed," or inactivated, virus. In 1954, within three years of first proposing the idea, he proceeded to test his vaccine in clinical trials and, by April 1955, had gained federal approval for public use of the vaccine. Although the vaccine proved to be dramatically successful - by 1961 the incidence of polio had dropped by 95 percent - Salk came up for considerable criticism from other scientists for failing to publish his safety data and moving too quickly on using the vaccine. "It's a shame that all the controversy buried the real accomplishments," comments Francis. "The sad thing is that he never got the Nobel Prize for his work - he developed a technology rather than making a fundamental discovery." The vaccine was never patented, and Salk personally made no money from this discovery. Born in New York City in 1914, Salk obtained an M.D. degree from New York University College of Medicine in 1939, and interned at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York for two years before turning to research in virology at the University of Michigan. In 1947 he became the director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, where he began his work with the polio virus. In 1960 he founded the Salk Institute of Biological Studies in La Jolla, with funding from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was also his ally in the polio vaccine efforts, and a gift of land from the city of San Diego. Dedicated to pursuing research in various areas of the life sciences, the institute over the years has attracted some of the country's top scientific talent, including Nobel laureate Francis Crick, who has taken over as director. "Jonas always said that his special vision for the institute was as a place to do research on understanding humans as a whole," recalls Walter Eckhart, director of the Armand Hammer Center for Cancer Biology at the institute. "He placed a very strong emphasis on the neurosciences as one of the keys to gaining this understanding." Salk's attitude carried over to the institute: According to the newsletter Science Watch, it has consistently ranked among the highest-impact laboratories in the country for neurosciences in recent years. "I always had a feeling of [Salk] as a person of vision," recounts Eckhart, who came to the institute as a postdoctoral fellow in 1965 and has been there ever since. "He had a real appreciation of people and always encouraged them to realize their dreams." - Neeraja Sankaran

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14 Memories, Stories & Photos about Jonas

Amanda S. Stevenson

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11/04/2017

Jonas Salk

A photo of Jonas Salk

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Comments

AncientFaces

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05/05/2020

On this day in 1955 the polio vaccine was introduced in the UK and this man became a hero to a whole generation of Boomers worldwide. Before that, about 45,000 children/yr in the US alone caught polio. By 1962, this was down to around 910 - and he never took a penny for his discovery!

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