John Franklin EndersDied 8 Sep 1985 at age 88 (born 10 Feb 1897).American virologist, microbiologist and virologist who (collaborating with Frederick C. Robbins and Thomas H. Weller) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for 1954 for his part in cultivating the poliomyelitis virus in nonnervous-tissue cultures (1949), a preliminary step to the development of the polio vaccine. They had cultivated the polio virus in test tube cultures of human tissue for the first time. They further demonstrated that the virus could be grown on a wide variety of tissue and not just nerve cells. This at last allowed the polio virus to be studied, typed, and produced in quantity. Without such an advance the triumphs of Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk in developing a vaccine against polio in the 1950s would have been impossible. |
