A Remarkable Life, an Extraordinary Era : The death of Jonas Salk closes a memorable chapter in medical history

Most Americans older than 50 still carry vivid memories of the poliomyelitis scourge: young friends struck down and confined to iron lungs and stiff metal braces, stern orders from parents to keep out of swimming pools where the paralyzing viral disease was thought to be spread. But by 1961, in one of the most concerted public-health battles ever waged, polio had nearly been eradicated.

No name was more closely linked in the public mind to this battle than that of Dr. Jonas Salk. The Russian immigrants’ son pioneered the concept of stimulating the immune system to combat the polio virus by injecting dead, rather than live, virus particles. Authorities started vaccinating millions of children in 1955, and public opinion polls of the day ranked Salk’s name near Gandhi’s and Churchill’s.

The irascible Salk never earned comparable respect among fellow scientists, who often ridiculed his unorthodox techniques, or perhaps envied his public acclaim. He feuded until death with Dr. Albert Sabin, whose oral vaccine later replaced the Salk vaccine. Salk never won a Nobel Prize, nor even membership in the National Academy of Sciences. He founded the Salk Institute in La Jolla, a major biological research center, but once said, “I couldn’t possibly have become a member of this institute if I hadn’t founded it myself.”

Scientist, philosopher, iconoclast, Salk hewed his own path to the very end, working on a vaccine meant to boost the immune systems of those already infected with the AIDS virus and prevent the onset of the disease but regarded dubiously by most AIDS experts. He was still at work on the vaccine when he died of heart failure Friday in La Jolla at the age of 80, ending a remarkable life and closing an extraordinary era in American medicine.