50 Fun Facts About Jonas Salk

Which disease did Jonas Salk develop one of the first successful vaccines against?

Domestic transmission of the disease was eliminated in the United States within 25 years of the vaccine's release.

What did Salk reply when Ed Murrow asked him who owned the rights to the vaccine?

The vaccine has been calculated to be worth $7 billion had it been patented; lawyers found it unpatentable anyway because of prior art.

On what date was the Salk vaccine announced as safe?

The announcement made him a "miracle worker" overnight; the anniversary is marked in documentaries and celebrations.

Where was Salk born on October 28, 1914?

The family moved from East Harlem to the Bronx, with a spell in Arverne, Queens.

Where had Salk's mother Dora been born before emigrating to the United States at 12?

His father Daniel was born in New Jersey to Jewish immigrant parents; neither had much formal education.

Which selective public academy did Salk enter at 13, where a four-year curriculum was crammed into three?

It was named after the founder of City College and its motto was "study, study, study".

What career had Salk aspired to before his mother urged him toward medical school?

He entered City College at 15 and took a chemistry degree in 1934.

Which medical school did Salk attend, notable for not applying quotas to Jewish applicants?

Yale accepted five of 200 Jewish applicants in 1935; NYU's tuition was also comparatively low.

What did Salk say about his boyhood interests?

He never intended to practise medicine, wanting to help humankind "in a larger sense than just on a one-to-one basis".

Which Michigan mentor introduced Salk to virology in 1941 and worked with him on a flu vaccine?

Francis had discovered the type B influenza virus while at the Rockefeller Foundation.

Where did Salk accept a professorship in 1947 and build the lab that produced the polio vaccine?

The lab was smaller than he hoped and the rules restrictive, but Mellon family grants let him build a real virology laboratory.

What did Harry Weaver of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis ask Salk to find out in 1948?

The typing project came with extra space, equipment and researchers.

What kind of poliovirus preparation did Salk choose, against the prevailing preference for weakened strains?

He believed it was safer; Albert Sabin was meanwhile developing an oral vaccine from live weakened strains.

Where did Salk inject 43 young patients with his killed-virus vaccine on July 2, 1952?

It is now the Education Center at the Watson Institute in Sewickley, Pennsylvania; he vaccinated his own children in 1953.

What were the roughly one million children in the 1954 field trial known as?

The project involved 100 million contributors to the March of Dimes and 7 million volunteers.

Which president founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which Salk later joined?

Publicity and fear of polio pushed the foundation's funding to $67 million by 1955.

Who developed the live oral polio vaccine that came into commercial use in 1961?

By 1959 the Salk vaccine had reached about 90 countries; the oral drops later became the global standard.

What did television journalist Ed Murrow tell Salk about the sudden media attention?

Salk found the fame appalling and talked constantly of getting back to his laboratory.

Roughly what value has been calculated for the vaccine had it been patented?

The foundation's lawyers concluded it was not a patentable invention because of prior art.

According to journalist Jon Cohen, what would happen when Salk boarded an aeroplane?

Hotels routinely upgraded him to penthouse suites and restaurant meals were interrupted by admirers.

What did Salk say belonged "in the category of mink coats and Cadillacs—unnecessary"?

The New York Times noted he had "very little perceptible interest in the things that interest most people".

In which San Diego neighbourhood did the Salk Institute for Biological Studies open in 1963?

It sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific.

Which architect designed the Salk Institute, with blackboards along the walks?

Salk imagined a "Socratic academy" where science and humanism could cross-fertilise.

Which co-discoverer of DNA's structure was a Salk Institute professor until his death in 2004?

The institute was also the setting for Latour and Woolgar's 1979 sociology classic Laboratory Life.

What did Salk call himself in the philosophy of Man Unfolding and The Survival of the Wisest?

The New York Times called him the "Father of Biophilosophy" in 1966.

What immunologic AIDS therapy did Salk co-found a company to develop and patent in the 1980s?

The Immune Response Corporation could not secure liability insurance, and the project was dropped in 2007.

What did Salk call the universal vaccination of children against disease?

He campaigned for mandatory vaccination for the rest of his life.

What two conditions did Salk's future father-in-law set before agreeing to his 1939 marriage?

The wealthy dentist considered Salk "several cuts below Donna's former suitors"; hence Jonas Edward Salk.

Which French painter, formerly Pablo Picasso's mistress, did Salk marry in 1970?

He had divorced Donna Lindsay in 1968; the marriage features in a cameo in the TV series Genius.

How many sons did Salk have with Donna Lindsay, all of whom went into medicine?

Peter became a physician, Darrell worked on vaccines and genetics, and Jonathan is a psychiatrist.

Of what did Salk die in La Jolla on June 23, 1995, at the age of 80?

He was buried at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego.

Which president presented Salk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977?

The citation said untold hundreds of thousands "who might have been crippled are sound in body today".

What was the Municipal Hospital building, where he did his polio research, renamed in 1957?

It now houses the university's School of Pharmacy and Dentistry.

Which annual observance falls on Salk's birthday, October 24 by Rotary International's reckoning?

It was originated by Rotary more than a decade before being formally named in 2012.

What did the 2014 Google Doodle for the vaccine pioneer's centenary show?

It depicted happy, healthy children and adults going about their lives.

Which actor-director, himself a childhood polio survivor, made a 2014 documentary about the Salk Institute?

He had suffered a mild case of polio as a boy.

What denomination was the 2006 US postage stamp honouring Salk in the Distinguished Americans series?

He was inducted into the California Hall of Fame the following year.

What did the March of Dimes Foundation create in 1996 as a tribute to Salk?

City College had created its Salk Scholarship fund for pre-med students back in 1955.

Which younger brother of Salk became a noted child psychologist?

The other brother, Herman, made up the trio of Salk boys.

Which international register includes Salk's inactivated polio vaccine?

It came into use in 1955 and is still given by injection around the world.

Which 1995 appeal to the World Court to end genital mutilation of children was Salk an original signatory of?

It was one of his last public acts before his death that June.

Where were Salk's personal papers deposited after his death?

The library is named for Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.

After medical school, Salk began his residency at which New York institution?

He again worked in Thomas Francis's laboratory there before following Francis to Michigan for an army-commissioned flu vaccine project.

In which year was Salk elected to the Polio Hall of Fame in Warm Springs, Georgia?

The same year he received the James D. Bruce Memorial Award; Warm Springs was the resort where Franklin Roosevelt sought polio treatment.

Salk Oval, named after him in 1961, is a sports ground in which country?

It sits on Queensland's Gold Coast, a long way from the Pittsburgh lab where the vaccine was developed.

In 1975 Salk received the Congressional Gold Medal and an award named after which Indian leader?

The Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding had earlier gone to figures such as U Thant and Martin Luther King Jr.

Which group named Salk its 'of the Year' honoree in 1976?

The honor came a year before Jimmy Carter presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Fear of polio pushed the National Foundation's funding to roughly what level by 1955?

Even so, the foundation went into debt to pay for the final research, backed by 100 million March of Dimes contributors and 7 million volunteers.

Roughly how many volunteers took part in the polio vaccine field trial project?

The vaccine was declared safe on April 12, 1955, after Salk had worked on it incessantly for two-and-a-half years.

In which year did Salk and his first wife Donna Lindsay divorce?

Two years later he married the French painter Françoise Gilot, who had once been Picasso's companion.