Dead Celebrity Alert

June 15, 1915 - August 23, 2008

The virologist and parasitologist Thomas Weller was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with his Harvard colleagues John Enders and Frederick Robbins for developing methods for growing the polio virus in the laboratory. …

This pioneering research enabled others to develop the polio vaccine that has resulted in the near-eradication of the disease from the world. The work found immediate applications to vitally important medical problems and opened up new fields of virus research, making it possible to grow a large number of other viruses in the laboratory and to create many other vaccines.

Weller also isolated the rubella (German measles) virus and the varicella-zoster virus (the common cause of chicken-pox in children and shingles in adults) and showed that the rubella virus and herpes virus could be transmitted from mother to foetus, producing birth defects. … Read full obituary

Filed under Science & Medicine