Max Theiler, Virologist

Max Theiler (January 30, 1899 - August 11, 1972) was a South African-American virologist. In 1922 Theiler took a position at the Harvard University School of Tropical Medicine and spent several years investigating amoebic dysentery and trying to develop a vaccine from rat-bite fever. He became assistant to Andrew Sellards. In 1926 they disproved Hideyo Noguchi's hypothesis that yellow fever was caused by the bacterium Leptospira icteroides, and in 1928 they showed that the African and South American viruses are immunologically identical. In the course of this research Theiler himself contracted yellow fever but survived and developed immunity. In 1930 Theiler moved to the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, where he later became director of the Virus Laboratory. After passing the yellow fever virus through laboratory mice, Theiler found that the weakened virus conferred immunity on Rhesus monkeys. In 1937 Theiler and his colleague Hugh Smith announced the development of the 17-D vaccine. Between 1940 and 1947 the Rockefeller Foundation produced more than 28 million doses of the vaccine and finally ended yellow fever as a major disease. For this work Theiler received the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He was professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale from 1964 to 1967. He died in 1972 at the age of 73

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African American Lasker Laureate Nobelist Recipient Virologist

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