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\"Salk\" redirects here. For other uses, see Salk (disambiguation).

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Jonas Salk
Salk in 1959
Born	Jonas Salk (1914-10-28)October 28, 1914 New York City, U.S.
Died	June 23, 1995(1995-06-23) (aged 80)^[1] La Jolla, California, U.S.^[1]
Resting place	El Camino Memorial Park (San Diego, California, U.S)
Alma mater	\n City College of New York^[1] \n New York University^[1] \n
Known for	First polio vaccine
Spouses	\n \n Donna Lindsay \n (m. 1939; div. 1968) ^[1]\n \n Fran\u00e7oise Gilot (m. 1970) ^[1]\n
Children	3
Awards	\n Albert Lasker Award (1956)^[1] \n Robert Koch Medal^[1] \n Mellon Institute Award^[1] \n United States Presidential Citation^[1] \n Congressional Gold Medal (1975)^[1] \n Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977) \n
Scientific career
Fields	Medical research virology epidemiology
Institutions	\n University of Pittsburgh \n Salk Institute \n University of Michigan \n
Doctoral advisor	Thomas Francis Jr.
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Signature

Jonas Edward Salk (/s\u0254\u02d0lk/; born Jonas Salk; October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine.^[2]\n

In 1947, Salk accepted a professorship at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he undertook a project beginning in 1948 to determine the number of different types of poliovirus. For the next seven years, Salk devoted himself to developing a vaccine against polio.\n

Salk was immediately hailed as a \"miracle worker\" when the vaccine's success was first made public in April 1955, and chose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distribution.^[2] The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the University of Pittsburgh looked into patenting the vaccine, but since Salk's techniques were not novel, their patent attorney said, \"If there were any patentable novelty to be found in this phase it would lie within an extremely narrow scope and would be of doubtful value.\"^[3]^[4] An immediate rush to vaccinate began in the United States and around the world. Many countries began polio immunization campaigns using Salk's vaccine, including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium. By 1959, the Salk vaccine had reached about 90 countries.^[5] An attenuated live oral polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin, coming into commercial use in 1961. Less than 25 years after the release of Salk's vaccine, domestic transmission of polio had been eliminated in the United States.\n

In 1963, Salk founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is today a center for medical and scientific research. He continued to conduct research and publish books in his later years, focusing in his last years on the search for a vaccine against HIV. Salk campaigned vigorously for mandatory vaccination throughout the rest of his life, calling the universal vaccination of children against disease a \"moral commitment\".^[6] Salk's personal papers are today stored in Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego.^[7]^[8]\n

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v t e History of infectious diseases
Individual diseases	\n Cholera \n HIV/AIDS \n Leprosy \n Malaria \n Plague \n Polio \n Smallpox \n Syphilis \n Tuberculosis \n Typhoid fever \n Yellow fever \n
People	\n Alexander Fleming \n Maurice Hilleman \n Edward Jenner \n Robert Koch \n Louis Pasteur \n Jonas Salk \n Ignaz Semmelweis \n John Snow \n Israel Jacob Kligler \n
Major epidemics	\n Black Death (1346\u20131353) \n Spanish flu (1918\u20131920) \n HIV/AIDS pandemic (1981\u2013present) \n COVID-19 pandemic (2019\u2013present\") \n
Other	\n Discovery of disease-causing pathogens \n Smallpox eradication \n Social history of viruses \n

v t e Time 100: The Most Important People of the 20th Century
Leaders & revolutionaries	\n David Ben-Gurion \n Winston Churchill \n Mahatma Gandhi \n Mikhail Gorbachev \n Adolf Hitler \n Ho Chi Minh \n Pope John Paul II \n Ruhollah Khomeini \n Martin Luther King Jr. \n Vladimir Lenin \n Nelson Mandela \n Mao Zedong \n Ronald Reagan \n Eleanor Roosevelt \n Franklin D. Roosevelt \n Theodore Roosevelt \n Margaret Sanger \n Margaret Thatcher \n Unknown Tiananmen Square rebel \n Lech Wa\u0142\u0119sa \n
Artists & entertainers	\n Louis Armstrong \n Lucille Ball \n The Beatles \n Marlon Brando \n Coco Chanel \n Charlie Chaplin \n Le Corbusier \n Bob Dylan \n T. S. Eliot \n Aretha Franklin \n Martha Graham \n Jim Henson \n James Joyce \n Pablo Picasso \n Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein \n Bart Simpson \n Frank Sinatra \n Steven Spielberg \n Igor Stravinsky \n Oprah Winfrey \n
Builders & titans	\n Stephen Bechtel Sr. \n Leo Burnett \n Willis Carrier \n Walt Disney \n Henry Ford \n Bill Gates \n Amadeo Giannini \n Ray Kroc \n Est\u00e9e Lauder \n William Levitt \n Lucky Luciano \n Louis B. Mayer \n Charles E. Merrill \n Akio Morita \n Walter Reuther \n Pete Rozelle \n David Sarnoff \n Juan Trippe \n Sam Walton \n Thomas J. Watson Jr. \n
Scientists & thinkers	\n Leo Baekeland \n Tim Berners-Lee \n Rachel Carson \n Albert Einstein \n Philo Farnsworth \n Enrico Fermi \n Alexander Fleming \n Sigmund Freud \n Robert H. Goddard \n Kurt G\u00f6del \n Edwin Hubble \n John Maynard Keynes \n Leakey family \n Jean Piaget \n Jonas Salk \n William Shockley \n Alan Turing \n Francis Crick & James Watson \n Ludwig Wittgenstein \n Wright brothers \n
Heroes & icons	\n Muhammad Ali \n The American G.I. \n Lady Diana Spencer \n Anne Frank \n Billy Graham \n Che Guevara \n Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay \n Helen Keller \n Kennedy family \n Bruce Lee \n Charles Lindbergh \n Harvey Milk \n Marilyn Monroe \n Emmeline Pankhurst \n Rosa Parks \n Pel\u00e9 \n Jackie Robinson \n Andrei Sakharov \n Mother Teresa \n Bill W. \n

Authority control databases $\"Edit$
International	ISNI VIAF FAST WorldCat
National	Germany United States France 2 BnF data 2 Italy Australia Czech Republic Netherlands Norway Poland Israel
Academics	CiNii
Artists	ULAN
People	Deutsche Biographie
Other	IdRef NARA SNAC 2

Early life and education

Education

Medical school

Postgraduate research and early laboratory work

Polio research

Becoming a public figure

Celebrity versus privacy

Maintaining his individuality

Establishing the Salk Institute

AIDS vaccine work

Salk's biophilosophy

Personal life and death

Honors and recognition

Documentary films

Selected publications

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Jonas Salk

What happened with Jonas Salk on 26 June, 1970

26 June, 1970