Edward Jenner Trivia
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49 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 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Gloucestershire town was Edward Jenner born in 1749?
Berkeley
Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, a small market town in the Vale of Berkeley, on 17 May 1749, and practised there for most of his life.
Q 02Jenner declined a naturalist's post on whose second Pacific voyage?
James Cook
After helping Joseph Banks arrange specimens from James Cook's first voyage, Jenner turned down an offer to sail as naturalist on Cook's second voyage and returned to Gloucestershire.
Q 03What procedure did the young Jenner undergo at school that affected his health for life?
Variolation against smallpox
Jenner underwent variolation against smallpox at about eight: weeks of bleeding, purging and fasting followed by deliberate infection with smallpox matter, which left his health weakened for life.
Q 04At 13, Jenner was apprenticed for seven years to a surgeon in which town?
Chipping Sodbury
Jenner was apprenticed to Daniel Ludlow, a surgeon at Chipping Sodbury, for seven years before moving to London to study under a leading surgeon.
Q 05Under which famous surgeon did Jenner train at a London hospital from 1770?
John Hunter
John Hunter, the great experimental surgeon, took Jenner as a resident pupil at St George's Hospital in 1770 and remained his friend and correspondent for life.
Q 06What fossil did the geologically minded Jenner unearth in 1819?
A plesiosaur
Jenner, an enthusiastic fossil collector, unearthed the bones of a plesiosaur, a long-necked marine reptile, in Gloucestershire in 1819.
Q 07From which university did Jenner obtain his MD in 1792?
St Andrews
Jenner obtained his MD from the University of St Andrews in 1792, a degree granted on the recommendation of two physicians rather than by examination.
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 for his study of which bird?
The cuckoo
Jenner's 1788 paper on the cuckoo, based on years of watching nests near his home, won him election as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Q 10What did Jenner discover that the newly hatched brood parasite does soon after hatching?
Ejects its foster siblings and their eggs
Jenner showed that the newly hatched chick ejects its foster siblings and their eggs from the nest, using a hollow in its back that disappears after about 12 days.
Q 11Which Victorian artist's observation of a blind brood-parasite nestling convinced Darwin that Jenner had been right?
Jemima Blackburn
Jemima Blackburn watched a blind, newly hatched nestling heave a meadow pipit chick out of its nest and drew it; Darwin cited her account in the sixth edition of the Origin.
Q 12How may Jenner have met his wife Catherine Kingscote in the 1780s?
His trial balloon came down on her father's estate
In 1784, the story goes, his trial balloon came down on her father's estate, Kingscote Park, and Jenner married Catherine Kingscote in March 1788.
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
The 1798 Inquiry set out 23 cases, combining earlier observations of people who had caught cowpox naturally with his own inoculation experiments.
Q 22How much did Parliament grant Jenner for his vaccination work in 1802?
£10,000
Parliament voted Jenner £10,000 in 1802 after a committee heard evidence of the vaccine's success; the money was meant to compensate his lost private practice.
Q 23Which Spanish mission of 1803–06 carried Jenner's vaccine to the Americas, Philippines and China?
The Balmis Expedition
The Balmis Expedition, led by Francisco Javier de Balmis, sailed from A Coruña in 1803 and vaccinated hundreds of thousands across Spanish America and the Philippines.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the ambassador to the Ottoman court, had her daughter inoculated in London in 1721 after seeing the practice in Constantinople.
Q 14Which Dorset farmer vaccinated his family with cowpox in 1774, two decades before Jenner?
Benjamin Jesty
Benjamin Jesty, a farmer at Yetminster in Dorset, used a stocking needle to inoculate his wife and two sons with cowpox from a neighbour's cattle during a 1774 smallpox outbreak.
Q 15On what date did Jenner carry out his famous first vaccination?
14 May 1796
On 14 May 1796 Jenner scratched cowpox matter from a milkmaid's hand into two small cuts on the boy's arm; a mild fever followed, then full recovery.
Q 16Who was James Phipps, the first person Jenner vaccinated?
His gardener's eight-year-old son
James Phipps was his gardener's eight-year-old son; he was case 17 in the 1798 Inquiry, and Jenner later granted him a rent-free cottage.
Q 17Which milkmaid supplied the cowpox pus that Jenner scraped from her hands?
Sarah Nelmes
Sarah Nelmes, a dairymaid from a farm near Jenner's home, had fresh cowpox lesions on her hand; Jenner took matter from them for the experiment.
Q 18Jenner is often called the father of which science?
Immunology
Jenner is often called the father of immunology, because his cowpox inoculation was the world's first vaccine.
Q 19How did Jenner prove Phipps was immune after the cowpox inoculation?
He challenged him with smallpox material and no disease followed
Weeks later he challenged him with smallpox material and no disease followed, the boy having been variolated in the usual way; a later challenge gave the same result.
Q 20What Latin name did Jenner give cowpox in the title of his 1798 Inquiry?
Variolae vaccinae
Variolae vaccinae, 'smallpox of the cow', was Jenner's Latin name for cowpox in his 1798 Inquiry, and it gave English the words 'vaccine' and 'vaccination'.
Q 24What did Napoleon do at Jenner's request while France was at war with Britain?
Released two English prisoners of war
At Jenner's request Napoleon released two English prisoners of war, saying he could refuse nothing to one of the greatest benefactors of mankind; he had his own army vaccinated.
Q 25In which year did the British government ban variolation and offer cowpox vaccination free of charge?
1840
The Vaccination Act of 1840 outlawed variolation and made cowpox vaccination free through the Poor Law medical officers; compulsion for infants came with the 1853 Act.
Q 26To which monarch was Jenner appointed physician extraordinary in 1821?
George IV
Jenner was appointed physician extraordinary to George IV in 1821, a largely honorary post that recognised his fame two years before his death.
Q 27What did Jenner present to the Royal Society in 1823, the last year of his life?
Observations on the migration of birds
Jenner's last paper, Observations on the Migration of Birds, was read to the Royal Society in 1823 and argued, against the old belief, that swallows migrate rather than hibernate.
Q 28How did Jenner die in January 1823?
An apparent stroke
Jenner was found paralysed down his right side on 25 January 1823, an apparent stroke, and died the following day, aged 73.
Q 29In which year did the World Health Organization declare smallpox eradicated?
1980
The World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated on 8 May 1980, two and a half years after the last natural case, in Somalia in October 1977.
Q 30Where are the two remaining official stocks of the smallpox virus kept?
CDC in Atlanta and VECTOR in Koltsovo, Russia
By WHO agreement the only official stocks are held at the CDC in Atlanta and VECTOR in Koltsovo, Russia, under high-security containment.