John Franklin Enders

Template:Short description Template:Infobox scientist John Franklin Enders (February 10, 1897 – September 8, 1985) was an American biomedical scientist and Nobel Laureate. Enders has been called "The Father of Modern Vaccines."<ref name="frs">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Life and education

Enders was born in West Hartford, Connecticut on February 10, 1897.<ref name="NobelBio">Template:Cite web</ref> His father, John Ostrom Enders, was CEO of the Hartford National Bank and left him a fortune of $19 million upon his death.<ref name="frs"/> He attended the Noah Webster School in Hartford,<ref name="Ofgang2020">Template:Cite journal</ref> and graduated from St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire in 1915.<ref name="Duisberg" /><ref name="NobelBio"/><ref>Thomas H Weller & Frederick C Robbins, A Biographical Memoir: John Franklin Enders (1897–1985), (Washington DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1991), p 48.</ref> After attending Yale University a short time, he joined the United States Army Air Corps in 1918 as a flight instructor and a lieutenant.

After returning from World War I, he graduated from Yale, where he was a member of Scroll and Key as well as Delta Kappa Epsilon. He went into real estate in 1922, and tried several careers before choosing the biomedical field with a focus on infectious diseases, gaining a PhD at Harvard in 1930. He later joined the faculty at Children's Hospital Boston.<ref name="NobelBio"/>

Enders died at his summer home in Waterford, Connecticut, aged 88, on 8 September 1985.<ref name="Ofgang2020"/> His wife died in 2000.

Biomedical career

In 1949, Enders, Thomas Huckle Weller, and Frederick Chapman Robbins reported successful in vitro culture of an animal virus—poliovirus.<ref name=Enders>Template:Cite journal</ref> The three received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of the ability of poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue".<ref name="Nobel1954">Template:Cite web</ref>

Meanwhile, Jonas Salk applied the Enders-Weller-Robbins technique to produce large quantities of poliovirus, and then developed a polio vaccine in 1952. Upon the 1954 polio vaccine field trial, whose success Salk announced on the radio,<ref>"Salk announces polio vaccine" Template:Webarchive. History.com. 2010. Retrieved 31 Jan 2010.</ref> Salk became a public hero but failed to credit the many other researchers that his effort rode upon, and was somewhat shunned by America's scientific establishment.<ref>Balik R, "On this day: Polio vaccine declared safe", FindingDulcinea, 12 Apr 2011.</ref>

In 1954, Enders and Thomas C. Peebles isolated measlesvirus from an 11-year-old boy, David Edmonston.<ref name=Baker>Template:Cite journal</ref> Disappointed by polio vaccine's development and involvement in some cases of polio and death—what Enders attributed to Salk's technique—Enders began development of measles vaccine.<ref name=Baker/> In October 1960, an Enders team began trials on 1,500 mentally retarded children in New York City and on 4,000 children in Nigeria.<ref name=Bakalar>Bakalar N, "First mention: Measles vaccine, 1960", New York Times, 5 Oct 2010, p D2.</ref> Refusing credit for merely himself when The New York Times announced the measles vaccine effective on September 17, 1961, Enders wrote to the newspaper to acknowledge the work of various colleagues and the collaborative nature of the research.<ref name="Ofgang2020"/><ref name=Bakalar/> In 1963, a deactivated measles vaccine and an attenuated measles vaccine were introduced by Pfizer and Merck & Co., respectively.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

He continued to work in virology research till the late 1970s and retired from the laboratory at the age of 80.<ref name="Ofgang2020"/><ref>Thomas H Weller & Frederick C Robbins, A Biographical Memoir: John Franklin Enders (1897–1985), (Washington DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1991), p 60.</ref>

Honors

• 1946: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences<ref name=AAAS>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1953: Member of the American Philosophical Society<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1954: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (together with Frederick Chapman Robbins and Thomas Huckle Weller)<ref name="Nobel1954"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1954: Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1955: Kyle Award from the U.S. Public Health Service<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1955: Member of the American Philosophical Society<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1958: inducted into the Polio Hall of Fame<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1960: Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• 1962: Robert Koch Prize<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1963: Presidential Medal of Freedom<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• 1963: Science Achievement Award from the American Medical Association<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• 1967: Foreign Member, The Royal Society<ref name="frs"/>
• 1970: John F. Enders Pediatric Research Laboratories dedicated<ref name="Duisberg">Template:Cite news</ref>

Enders also held honorary doctoral degrees from 13 universities.<ref>Thomas H Weller & Frederick C Robbins, A Biographical Memoir: John Franklin Enders (1897–1985), (Washington DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1991), p 62.</ref>

See also

• Anna Mitus

References

• Template:Cite book
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External links

• Template:Nobelprize including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1954 The Cultivation of the Poliomyelitis Viruses in Tissue Culture
• John Franklin Enders Papers (MS 1478). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.