John Franklin Enders

Nobel Prize Recipient. John Franklin Enders, an American virologist and microbiologist, received international recognition after being awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He shared the Nobel Prize with his younger colleagues, Thomas Huckle Weller, an American physician and virologist, and Fredrick Chapman, an American pediatrician and virologist. According to the Nobel Prize committee, these three men received the coveted award "for their discovery of the ability of poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue." He has been called "The Father of Modern Vaccines." Crucial to developing a vaccine was their observation that the multiplication of the viruses in the culture dishes showed changes in the cell tissues that were visible with a high-power light microscope, so viable and growing poliovirus could be detected. This discovery greatly lessened the need for the expensive method of using monkeys to confirm the presence of the poliovirus. Their research was done between 1948 to 1950 with a published article. Born the son of a wealthy banker, he attended private schools before entering Yale University in 1915. In 1917 he left school to become a United States Army Air Corp pilot in 1918, serving in World War I. At the rank of lieutenant, he was a flight instructor. In 1919, upon returning to Yale, he received a B.A Degree, honoris causa, and in 1920 finished his degree. After graduation, he entered real estate in 1922, but became dissatisfied in a few years. Entering Harvard University, he studied English literature and Germanic and Celtic languages for four years with the goal of becoming an English teacher, but he was not satisfied with this career choice either. After befriending medical students and taking a biology course, he turned his major to science, earning in 1930 a Ph.D. in bacteriology and immunology with a thesis on anaphylaxis. From 1930 until 1946, he remained at Harvard University as a member of the teaching staff. During World War II, he served as a member of the Armed Forces Epidemiology Board, serving as a consultant to the Department of War by developing diagnostic tests and immunizations for a variety of diseases and continuing to be a consultant after the war. In 1946, he joined the faculty at Children's Hospital in Boston to establish a research laboratory, which was funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis . With his assistants, he did research not only with the polio virus, but in the diseases of pneumonia, German measles, chicken pox, Influenza, and mumps. By chance, it was discovered that the polio virus grew in human embryonic tissues. The publication of this scientific find in the professional periodical, "Science," in 1949 caused major stir in the medical community. At the time of the 1954 Nobel Prize, he was an assistant professor and was not promoted to full-professorship until 1956, with the honor of university professor in 1962. Eventually, he became a Higgins University Professor at Harvard University and Chief of the Research Division of Infectious Diseases of the Children's Hospital in Boston. In 1954 he and his young assistant, Dr. Thomas C. Peeples developed the measles vaccine. In 1952 Dr. Jonas Salk applied the Enders-Weller-Robbins technique to produce large quantities of poliovirus, then developing the vaccine. Salk introduced the vaccine to the public, which became to be known as the Salk Vaccine. At the end of his career, he was researching the HIV virus and cancer. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received in 1955 the Kyle Award from the United States Public Health Service and in 1963 the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the American Medical Association's Science Achievement Award, which is rarely awarded to non-physician candidates. Enders' image was on the cover of "Time" magazine in the November 17, 1961 edition. In 1967, he became a foreign member of the Royal Society of London. He wrote some 190 published papers between 1929 and 1970. His widow donated all his research papers to Yale University Manuscripts and Archives at the Yale University Library. His uncle was the president of the very successful Aetna Insurance Company. Upon his father's death, he inherited millions of dollars. He married twice and with his first wife, daughter had a son, who died before him. His remarried for the second time as a widow.