Why jonas salk is important

Salk spent his last years searching for a vaccine against AIDS. He died on June 23, at the age of 80 in La Jolla, California. You don't have to have a science degree to help make a change.

Donate Today! Overview About Jonas Salk Memoriam. Jonas Salk. On April 12 th , the announcement finally came: the vaccine was a clear success. Jonas Salk became an overnight celebrity. His name was painted in shop windows; he received medals, honorary degrees, and even the offer of a ticker tape parade.

Could you patent the sun? The Americas were declared free of the disease in , with Europe following suite in The disease is still endemic in Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan, and difficulties in administering immunisation programmes still hamper efforts to wipe out the disease entirely in parts of South Asia and Africa. Today, work continues to develop new preventative medicine for polio. By providing intensely bright light, synchrotrons like Diamond allow scientists to determine the atomic structure of diseases like polio, and design drugs based on this understanding.

In this way, Diamond and other synchrotrons are playing an important role in helping with the development of next-generation vaccines. Salk died of heart failure on June 23, , at his home in La Jolla, California.

With his groundbreaking vaccine, Salk had earned his place in medical history. He will always be remembered as the man who stopped polio. Salk was married to social worker Donna Lindsay from to The couple had three sons together: Peter, Darrell and Jonathan. In , he married artist Francoise Gilot, who had previously been romantically involved with Pablo Picasso. We strive for accuracy and fairness.

If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. American biochemist and pharmacologist Gertrude B. Elion helped develop drugs to treat leukemia and prevent kidney transplant rejection.

She won a Nobel Prize for medicine in Robert Oppenheimer is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for leading the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the first nuclear weapon during World War II. Patricia Bath was the first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology and the first African American female doctor to receive a medical patent. She invented the Laserphaco Probe for cataract treatment in Charles Drew was an African American surgeon who pioneered methods of storing blood plasma for transfusion and organized the first large-scale blood bank in the U.

Daniel Hale Williams was one of the first physicians to perform open-heart surgery in the United States and founded a hospital with an interracial staff. Astronomer Edwin Hubble revolutionized the field of astrophysics.