Jonas Edward Salk (born October 28, 1914; died June 23, 1995) was an American scientist who studied viruses and worked to create a vaccine for polio. He was born in New York City and studied at the City College of New York and the New York University School of Medicine.

In 1947, Salk became a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. There, he began research in 1948 to learn how many different types of poliovirus existed. For the next seven years, he focused on creating a vaccine to fight polio.

When news of the vaccine’s success was shared in April 1955, Salk was praised as a "miracle worker." He decided not to patent the vaccine or seek money from it, so more people worldwide could use it. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the University of Pittsburgh considered patenting the vaccine, but their lawyer said Salk’s methods were not new enough to be patented. Soon after, vaccination efforts began in the United States and many other countries, including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium. By 1959, the Salk vaccine was used in about 90 countries. A different vaccine, created by Albert Sabin and made available in 1961, used a weakened form of the virus. Less than 25 years after Salk’s vaccine was released, polio no longer spread among people in the United States.

In 1963, Salk started the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is now a place for medical and scientific research. He continued to study and write books later in life, focusing on finding a vaccine for HIV. Salk supported requiring vaccinations for children, calling it a "moral commitment." Today, his personal papers are kept in Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego.

Early life and education

Jonas Salk was born on October 28, 1914, in New York City to Daniel and Dora (née Press) Salk. His parents were Jewish. Daniel was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents, and Dora was born in Minsk and moved to the United States when she was 12 years old. Salk’s parents did not receive much formal education. He had two younger brothers, Herman and Lee. The family lived in East Harlem before moving to 853 Elsmere Place in the Bronx. They also lived for some time at 439 Beach 69th Street in Arverne, Queens.

At age 13, Salk entered Townsend Harris Hall Prep School, a public school for students with high intellectual abilities. The school was named after the founder of City College of New York (CCNY). It helped many children of immigrant families who could not afford private schools. In high school, Salk was known as a perfectionist who read everything he could find. Students had to complete a four-year curriculum in just three years. Many students dropped out or failed because of the difficulty. However, those who graduated often had the grades needed to enter CCNY, a highly competitive college.

Salk enrolled in CCNY, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1934. For working-class immigrant families, CCNY was the top public college in New York. Tuition was free, and rules were fair. No one had an advantage based on their background. His mother encouraged him to focus on medical school instead of becoming a lawyer. However, CCNY had limited resources. There were no research labs, and the library was not large. The faculty included few well-known scholars. Despite this, many students who attended CCNY became successful in science and medicine. Salk entered CCNY at age 15, which was common for students who had skipped grades.

As a child, Salk was not interested in medicine or science. He said in an interview that he was more interested in human nature and the human side of the world. After graduating from CCNY, Salk enrolled in New York University School of Medicine. NYU had a modest reputation but accepted Jewish students, unlike other schools that limited the number of Jewish applicants. During his time at NYU, Salk worked as a laboratory technician and a camp counselor.

During his medical studies, Salk excelled academically and was part of an honor society for medical students. However, he decided not to practice medicine. Instead, he focused on research and studied biochemistry for a year. Later, he became interested in bacteriology, which became his main focus. He wanted to help people in general, not just individual patients. He said that laboratory work gave him a new direction in life.

Salk explained that he wanted to become a medical scientist, not a doctor. He completed all the requirements to qualify as a doctor but chose to study science instead. During his first year of medical school, he had the chance to study biochemistry for a year. At the end of that year, he could have switched to a science degree, but he chose to stay in medicine. His goal was to help people in a broader way.

In his final year of medical school, Salk worked in a laboratory studying influenza. The influenza virus had been discovered a few years earlier. He tested whether it was possible to destroy the virus’s ability to cause disease while still creating immunity. Through careful experiments, he found that this was possible.

In 1941, during his postgraduate work in virology, Salk chose to spend two months in the laboratory of Thomas Francis at the University of Michigan. Francis had recently joined the university after working for the Rockefeller Foundation, where he discovered the type B influenza virus. This experience introduced Salk to virology, and he became deeply interested in the field. After graduating from medical school, Salk worked at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he again studied with Francis. He later worked with Francis at the University of Michigan School of Public Health on a military project to develop an influenza vaccine. Together, they created a vaccine used at army bases. Salk discovered and isolated one of the virus strains included in the final vaccine.

Polio research

In 1947, Salk wanted to work independently and was given a laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. However, the lab was smaller than he expected, and the university’s rules limited his work.

In 1948, Harry Weaver, who led research at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, asked Salk to study whether more types of polio existed than the three already known. He also offered more space, equipment, and researchers. For the first year, Salk gathered supplies and brought on researchers, including Julius Youngner, Byron Bennett, L. James Lewis, Elsie N. Ward, and secretary Lorraine Friedman. Over time, Salk secured funding from the Mellon family and built a working virology laboratory. He later joined a polio research project started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Because of public concern about polio, funding for research increased greatly, reaching $67 million by 1955. Even with this funding, scientists continued studying live vaccines. Salk chose to use a "killed" virus vaccine, which he believed was safer, instead of weakened virus strains like those used by Albert Sabin, who was working on an oral vaccine.

After testing the vaccine on laboratory animals, on July 2, 1952, Salk, with help from staff at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children (now the Education Center at the Watson Institute in Sewickley, Pennsylvania), gave the killed-virus vaccine to 43 children. A few weeks later, he vaccinated children at the Polk State School for the Retarded and Feeble-minded. Salk vaccinated his own children in 1953. In 1954, he tested the vaccine on about one million children, known as the polio pioneers. The vaccine was declared safe on April 12, 1955.

The project involved 100 million people who contributed to the March of Dimes and 7 million volunteers. The foundation borrowed money to fund the final research needed to create the Salk vaccine. Salk worked nonstop for two-and-a-half years.

The inactivated polio vaccine became widely used in 1955. It is listed on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines.

Becoming a public figure

Jonas Salk wanted to keep his work as a scientist separate from too much personal attention, as he always tried to stay independent and private in his research and life. However, this was not possible. Television personality Ed Murrow told Salk, "Young man, a great tragedy has befallen you—you've lost your anonymity," after the media began focusing heavily on him. When Murrow asked, "Who owns this patent?" Salk replied, "Well, the people I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" The vaccine would have been worth about $7 billion if it had been patented. However, lawyers from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis studied the possibility of a patent but concluded the vaccine could not be patented due to existing knowledge or inventions.

Salk served on the board of directors of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Author Jon Cohen wrote, "Jonas Salk made scientists and journalists act strangely. As one of the few scientists known worldwide, Salk was seen as a celebrity. Airplane pilots would announce his presence, and passengers would cheer. Hotels often gave him upgrades to penthouse suites. At restaurants, people would interrupt him to speak with him. Scientists and journalists who worked with Salk eventually saw him as more human, but many still reacted with surprise, as if he might share some of his success.

A few months after his vaccine was announced, The New York Times reported that Salk was upset about the attention he received and felt his privacy was invaded. The article noted that Salk, who was 40 years old, had become a public hero after leaving his laboratory. He received a presidential citation, many awards, four honorary degrees, several foreign honors, and letters from thousands of people. His former school, City College of New York, gave him an honorary degree as Doctor of Laws. However, The New York Times wrote that Salk was deeply troubled by the sudden fame. He often said he wanted to return to his laboratory and avoid the public spotlight because he believed scientists should not seek attention.

During a 1980 interview, 25 years after the vaccine was created, Salk said, "It feels like I have been public property since then, needing to respond to both outside and inside pressures. It has brought me happiness and many opportunities, but it has also created many challenges. It changed my career and how I interact with colleagues. I am now a public figure, not one of them."

The New York Times wrote, "Jonas Salk the scientist may seem serious, but Jonas Salk the person is warm and enthusiastic. People who meet him usually like him." A Washington newspaper reporter said, "He could convince me to buy something I didn’t need." Geneticist Walter Nelson-Rees called him "a scientist with great talent, knowledge, and drive."

Salk enjoyed talking to people he liked, and The New York Times noted, "He likes many people. He speaks quickly, clearly, and in full sentences." He also said he had little interest in things most people care about, like making money. He compared earning money to "mink coats and Cadillacs—unnecessary."

Establishing the Salk Institute

After Salk's discovery, many supporters, especially the National Foundation, helped him create his dream of a research center to study biological processes from cells to society. This center, named the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, opened in 1963 in La Jolla, San Diego. It was built specifically for the institute and designed by architect Louis Kahn. Salk believed the institute would support young scientists in their careers. He once said, "I thought how nice it would be if a place like this existed and I was invited to work there."

In 1966, Salk shared his big plan to create a kind of academy where science and humanism could work together in a supportive environment. Author Howard Taubman explained this idea in a 1980 article from The New York Times, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Salk vaccine. The article described the institute's work at that time.

In an interview about his future goals, Salk said, "In the end, what may have more significance is my creation of the institute and what will come out of it, because of its example as a place for excellence, a creative environment for creative minds."

Francis Crick, who helped discover the structure of DNA, was a leading professor at the institute until his death in 2004. The institute also inspired the 1979 book Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar.

AIDS vaccine work

In the mid-1980s, Salk began research to create a vaccine for AIDS. He helped start The Immune Response Corporation (IRC) with Kevin Kimberlin. They developed a treatment called Remune, which helps the immune system. However, they could not get insurance to cover any problems caused by the product. The project ended in 2007, twelve years after Salk passed away.

Activism

In 1995, Jonas Salk was one of the original signers of the Ashley Montagu Resolution. This resolution asked the World Court, now called the International Court of Justice, to help stop harmful procedures involving the genital area of children. These procedures included female genital mutilation, circumcision, and penile subincision.

Salk's biophilosophy

In 1966, The New York Times called him the "Father of Biophilosophy." Howard Taubman, a journalist and author for The New York Times, wrote that the man believed "there is a vast amount of darkness for man to penetrate." As a biologist, he thought science was on the edge of major new discoveries. As a philosopher, he believed that humanists and artists had joined scientists to better understand humans in all their physical, mental, and spiritual complexity. These exchanges, he hoped, might lead to a new group of thinkers he called "biophilosophers."

In 1984, during a meeting at Capitol Hill, Salk told his cousin, Joel Kassiday, that he believed ways to prevent most human and animal diseases would eventually be developed. He said people must be ready to take careful risks, because "a risk-free society would become a dead-end society" without progress.

Salk described his biophilosophy as using a "biological, evolutionary point of view" to study philosophical, cultural, social, and psychological problems. He explained this idea further in two books: Man Unfolding and The Survival of the Wisest. In a 1980 interview, he shared his thoughts on population changes, including his belief that human population would rise sharply and then eventually level off, leading to changes in human attitudes.

Salk defined a biophilosopher as "someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and understands that we have become the process itself, through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our ability to imagine and anticipate the future, and to choose from among alternatives."

Before his death, Salk was working on a new book about biophilosophy, privately reported to be titled Millennium of the Mind.

Personal life and death

After graduating from medical school in 1939, Salk married Donna Lindsay, a student working toward a master's degree at the New York College of Social Work. David Oshinsky wrote that Donna's father, Elmer Lindsay, a wealthy dentist in Manhattan, considered Salk to be less socially important than Donna's previous suitors. Eventually, her father agreed to the marriage with two conditions: first, Salk had to wait until he was officially listed as an M.D. on the wedding invitations, and second, he needed to improve his social standing by adding a middle name.

They had three children: Peter, who became a doctor and a part-time professor of infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh; Darrell, who worked with vaccines and genetics and later retired from the pediatrics faculty at the University of Washington School of Medicine; and Jonathan Salk, who became an adult and child psychiatrist and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. They divorced in 1968, and Salk married French painter Françoise Gilot two years later. Françoise had once had a romantic relationship with Pablo Picasso.

On June 23, 1995, Salk died from heart failure at the age of 80 in La Jolla. He was buried at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego.

Honors and recognition

• In 1955, one month after the vaccine was announced, he was honored by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Governor George M. Leader presented him with the "highest award for services," the Meritorious Service Medal. The governor added a statement during the ceremony.

• In 1955, the City University of New York established the Salk Scholarship fund. This fund is given to several outstanding pre-med students each year.

• In 1956, he was awarded the Lasker Award.

• In 1957, the Municipal Hospital building in Pittsburgh, where Salk conducted his polio research at the University of Pittsburgh, was renamed Jonas Salk Hall. This building now houses the university's School of Pharmacy and Dentistry.

• In 1958, he was awarded the James D. Bruce Memorial Award.

• In 1958, he was elected to the Polio Hall of Fame. This hall was dedicated in Warm Springs, Georgia.

• In 1961, a place called Salk Oval on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, was named after him.

• In 1975, he was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award and the Congressional Gold Medal.

• In 1976, he received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award.

• In 1976, he was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association.

• In 1977, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter. A statement accompanied the medal.

• In 1981, the Italian government decorated him as a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic on January 3.

• In 1996, the March of Dimes Foundation created an annual $250,000 cash "Prize" for outstanding biologists. This was done to honor Salk.

• In 2006, the United States Postal Service issued a 63-cent postage stamp in his honor as part of the Distinguished Americans series.

• In 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Salk into the California Hall of Fame.

• In 2009, a BBYO boys chapter in Scottsdale, Arizona, was chartered in his honor. It was named "Jonas Salk AZA #2357."

• Schools in Mesa, Arizona; Spokane, Washington; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Bolingbrook, Illinois; Levittown, New York; Old Bridge, New Jersey; Merrillville, Indiana; Sacramento, California; and Mira Mesa, California, are named after him.

• In 2012, October 24 was named "World Polio Day" to honor his birthday. This day was started by Rotary International more than a decade earlier.

• In 2014, a Google Doodle was created to honor Dr. Salk on the 100th anniversary of his birth. The doodle shows happy and healthy children and adults, with two children holding a sign that says, "Thank you, Dr. Salk!"

• In early 2009, the American Public Broadcasting Service showed a documentary film titled American Experience: The Polio Crusade.

• On April 12, 2010, a new 66-minute documentary titled The Shot Felt 'Round the World premiered to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the Salk vaccine. The film was directed by Tjardus Greidanus and produced by Laura Davis. It was conceived by Carl Kurlander, a Hollywood screenwriter and producer, to provide a new perspective on the era.

• In 2014, actor and director Robert Redford, who had a mild case of polio as a child, directed a documentary about the Salk Institute in La Jolla.

• In Chapter 10 of the 2018 season of Genius, Michael McElhatton portrays Salk in a short scene where he is on a date with Françoise Gilot.

Selected publications

• Man Unfolding (1972)
• Survival of the Wisest (1973)
• World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981)
• Anatomy of Reality: Merging of Intuition and Reason (1983)