Jonas Salk

Jonas Edward Salk was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine, later choosing to do medical research instead of becoming a practicing physician. He began an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City in 1939. Two years later, he was granted a fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he spent several years studying flu viruses with his mentor, Thomas Francis Jr.