June 23, marks the death anniversary of Jonas Salk, an American physician and medical researcher who is a creator of the first safe and effective vaccine for polio.
Jonas Salk was born on October 28, 1914, in New York City. Salk earns his M.D. from the New York University in 1939. In 1942, at the University Of Michigan School Of Public Health, he became a part of a group that was working to develop a vaccine against flu. In 1947 he became head of the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh.
At Pittsburgh he started his research on polio. Preliminary testing of the polio vaccine began in 1952 - the shot given mostly to children. In 1954, Thomas Francis, Jr., conducted a mass clinical trial wherein he proved vaccine to be safe and effective. On April 12, 1955, the vaccine was released in the United States. In its first few years, the vaccine had a remarkable impact on the number of new cases of polio.
He established the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in 1963. Salk had several awards to his credits; the most prestigious was Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977). Salk died in 1995.
Source: Adapted and retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jonas-Salk. As accessed on 23 June 2016.
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