Jonas Edward Salk was born October 28, 1914 in New York, eldest of 3 sons to Russian Jewish immigrants Daniel & Dara Salk. First member of family to attend college and earned first medical degree from New York University School of Medicine in 1939. He became a scientist physician at Mount Sinai Hospital. In 1942 Salk went to the University Of Michigan on a research fellowship to develop a in influenza vaccine and reconnected with his friend Thomas Francis Jr. Who taught him the methodology of vaccine development. In 1947, Salk was appointed director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. With funding from National Foundation for Inantile Paralysis known as March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation where he began to develop the techniques that would lead to the vaccine of Paralytic Poliomyelitis.
Later in life while working on the vaccination three researchers from Hardvard provided a breakthrough when they found the virus could grow on scraps of tissue. Bacteria usually contaminated tissue but penicillin would help the prevention of bacterial growth. Using formaldehyde he killed the Polio virus but kept it intact to trigger a body response. July 2, 1952 Salk refined the vaccine on children who already had Polio and they recovered. In 1953 Salk reported his findings in The Journal of American Medical Association. The mass start for the vaccine started in 1954 with school children and prevented the disease by 60-70% but the vaccine killed 11 people so the vaccinations stopped. Later found that one drug store had made a bad batch of the medicine and vaccinations continued and saw a great reduction of Polio with 4 million vaccinations given by August 1955. In 1956 29,485 went down to 14,647 in 1957, then 90 in 1959. However in 1962 Albert Sabin had his vaccine licensed and that quickly became the source for the vaccine where it could now be swallowed instead of injected and was cheaper.
Jonas Salk died June 23, 1995 in La Jolla, California he was 80 years old.