Jonas Salk 100th Birthday: Polio vaccine developer’s extraordinary achievement celebrated with a Doodle
Google has celebrated the 100th birthday of Dr Jonas Salk, the American scientists who developed the first successful polio vaccine, with a Doodle on its homepage. The Heart-warming illustration depicts two children holding up a sign reading “Thank you, Dr Salk!” – a tribute to the virologist’s work against a disease whose main victims were children.
In the two years before his vaccine was made widely available, the average number of polio cases in the US was more than 45,000. By 1962, that number had dropped to 910.
Salk graduated from New York University School of Medicine in 1939 with his M.D. degree, and soon started work as a staff physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
He would then apply his talents to the field of research, becoming a fellow at the University of Michigan where he worked to develop a flu vaccine at the request of the US Army.
By 1947, he was appointed director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, the institution where he developed the techniques that would help him discover a vaccine for polio.
SOURCE:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/jonas-salks-100th-birthday-google-doodle-celebrates-the-anniversary-of-scientist-who-developed-police-vaccine-9822226.html
Jonas Salk – Biography – Doctor, Scientist — Jonas Salk’s 100th Birth Anniversary
I still remember getting the polio sugar cube. Lets hope the cure for ebola isn’t far off
Happy birthday, Jonas Salk, who got a Google doodle today! The man who discovered the polio vaccine would have celebrated his 100th birthday Tuesday. Salk was born in 1914 in New York City. He died in 1994 at age 80, according to the Salk Institute.
Salk was the director of the Virus Research Library at the University of Pittsburgh when he realized he could kill the polio virus with formaldehyde but still have it trigger an immune response. Polio was an epidemic in the U.S. for many years, leading to paralysis in thousands of people. In 1955 the vaccine Salk developed went public and Salk was hailed a hero. The epidemic was stopped in its tracks.
Jonas Salk Google Doodle Youtube Video
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has named polio eradication a top priority among its vaccination campaigns. The development of the polio vaccine “was a huge milestone in human health,” says Mr. Gates. Going forward, scientists are ramping up the use of technology — GPS tracking, satellite maps to find remote villages and information exchange on the Internet. The aim also is to create an infrastructure for a vaccine or health delivery system that could benefit other causes.