50 free Edward Jenner trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Edward Jenner trivia quiz covers the Gloucestershire country doctor whose cowpox experiment of 14 May 1796 gave the world its first vaccine and, in the end, wiped smallpox from the planet. It follows him from the vicarage in Berkeley and a boyhood variolation that damaged his health, through his apprenticeship under John Hunter in London ('Don't think; try'), his marriage to Catherine Kingscote and his surprising fame as a naturalist who worked out what baby cuckoos do to their nest-mates. Then comes the vaccine: milkmaid Sarah Nelmes, the cow Blossom, eight-year-old James Phipps, the Latin phrase that gave us the word vaccine, the 23 cases of the 1798 Inquiry, the parliamentary grants, the Balmis Expedition, Napoleon's medal, the 1840 ban on variolation, and the discovery that the modern vaccine virus is not cowpox at all. It finishes with Jenner's honours, his death in 1823 and the WHO's 1980 declaration that smallpox was gone. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Jenner, smallpox and the vaccine, and each explanation adds one further fact. Ideal for science students, medical historians and anyone building a quiz round on great inventions.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Gloucestershire town was Edward Jenner born in 1749?
Berkeley
He was the eighth of nine children of the local vicar and later served the town as mayor and magistrate.
Q 02What was the profession of Jenner's father?
Clergyman
The Reverend Stephen Jenner's position gave his son a strong basic education at schools in Wotton-under-Edge and Cirencester.
Q 03What procedure did the young Jenner undergo at school that affected his health for life?
Variolation against smallpox
The deliberate infection with smallpox matter was the standard protection of the day, and its risks helped motivate his later search for something safer.
Q 04At 13, Jenner was apprenticed for seven years to a surgeon in which town?
Chipping Sodbury
Daniel Ludlow gave him most of the experience he needed before he went to London at 21.
Q 05Under which famous surgeon did Jenner train at a London hospital from 1770?
John Hunter
Hunter passed on William Harvey's advice, 'Don't think; try', and later proposed Jenner for the Royal Society.
Q 06Which three-word piece of advice did Hunter pass to Jenner?
Don't think; try
William Osler recorded it as William Harvey's maxim, typical of the Age of Enlightenment.
Q 07From which university did Jenner obtain his MD in 1792?
St Andrews
By then he had twenty years of general practice and surgery behind him in Berkeley.
Q 08Jenner's local club of physicians took its nickname from the inn where it met. What was it called?
The Fleece
Members dined in the parlour of the Fleece Inn at Rodborough and read papers; Jenner's covered angina and heart valves and mentioned cowpox.
Q 09Jenner was elected to the Royal Society in 1788 for a study of which bird?
The cuckoo
He combined observation, experiment and dissection, and his nephew helped with the fieldwork.
Q 10What did Jenner discover that the newly hatched brood parasite does soon after hatching?
Ejects its foster siblings and their eggs
He found a hollow in the chick's back that vanishes after 12 days, an anatomical tool for the job; people had assumed the adult did it.
Q 11Which Victorian artist's observation of a blind brood-parasite nestling convinced Darwin that Jenner had been right?
Jemima Blackburn
Darwin revised a later edition of On the Origin of Species on the strength of her description and drawing.
Q 12How may Jenner have met his wife Catherine Kingscote in the 1780s?
His trial balloon came down on her father's estate
They married in March 1788 and had three children; she died of tuberculosis in 1815.
Q 13Which aristocrat imported variolation to Britain in 1721 after seeing it in Constantinople?
Q 21How many cases did Jenner analyse in his 1798 Inquiry, the pamphlet that named cowpox in Latin?
23
They included his own 11-month-old son Robert; his first informal report to the Royal Society in 1797 had been sceptically received.
Q 22How much did Parliament grant Jenner for his vaccination work in 1802?
£10,000
A further £20,000 followed five years later after the Royal College of Physicians confirmed the vaccine worked.
Q 23Which Spanish mission of 1803–06 carried Jenner's vaccine to the Americas, Philippines and China?
The Balmis Expedition
Jenner wrote that history offered no example of philanthropy 'so noble, so extensive'.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Voltaire claimed the Turks borrowed the custom from the Circassians; Shetland's Johnnie Notions later devised his own method.
Q 14Which Dorset farmer vaccinated his family with cowpox in 1774, two decades before Jenner?
Benjamin Jesty
At least five investigators in England and Germany tried cowpox before Jenner, but only his work made the method understood.
Q 15On what date did Jenner carry out his famous first vaccination?
14 May 1796
He inoculated the boy through two small cuts on the arm; a fever followed but no full-blown infection.
Q 16Who was James Phipps, the first person Jenner vaccinated?
His gardener's eight-year-old son
Phipps was case 17 in Jenner's first paper, and Jenner later gave him a free lease on a cottage in Berkeley.
Q 17Which milkmaid supplied the cowpox pus that Jenner scraped from her hands?
Sarah Nelmes
She had caught cowpox from a cow named Blossom, whose hide hangs in the St George's medical school library and whose horns are in Jenner's house.
Q 18What was the name of the cow that infected the milkmaid in Jenner's experiment?
Blossom
Her hide now hangs on the wall of the St George's Medical School library in Tooting.
Q 19How did Jenner prove Phipps was immune after the cowpox inoculation?
He challenged him with smallpox material and no disease followed
Donald Hopkins argues this proof of immunity, plus arm-to-arm transfer of cowpox, was Jenner's real contribution.
Q 20The words 'vaccine' and 'vaccination' come from Jenner's Latin term for cowpox. What was it?
Variolae vaccinae
It means 'pustules of the cow', from vacca, and appeared in the title of his 1798 Inquiry.
Q 24What did Napoleon do at Jenner's request while France was at war with Britain?
Released two English prisoners of war
Napoleon, who had all his troops vaccinated and gave Jenner a medal, said he could not refuse anything to 'one of the greatest benefactors of mankind'.
Q 25In which year did the British government ban variolation and offer cowpox vaccination free of charge?
1840
Compulsory infant vaccination followed in England with the Vaccination Act of 1853.
Q 26Which small state became the first in the world to make smallpox vaccination compulsory, in 1806?
The Swiss canton of Thurgau
Elisa Bonaparte's Lucca and Piombino followed six months later, then Bavaria in 1807.
Q 27To which monarch was Jenner appointed physician extraordinary in 1821?
George IV
The same year he became mayor of Berkeley and a justice of the peace.
Q 28What did Jenner present to the Royal Society in 1823, the last year of his life?
Observations on the migration of birds
He never abandoned natural history; his earlier medical papers had covered angina, ophthalmia and heart valve disease.
Q 29How did Jenner die in January 1823?
An apparent stroke
Found paralysed on his right side on 25 January, he died the next day aged 73 and was buried in the family vault at St Mary's, Berkeley.
Q 30In which year did the World Health Organization declare smallpox eradicated?
1980
The last natural case was diagnosed in October 1977; smallpox remains the only human disease ever eradicated.