News at HSPH
Thomas Weller signing his autobiography in 2004
Max Essex
Throughout Harvard’s history, scores of faculty and researchers have played key roles in vanquishing diseases. Two from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) made major contributions—Max Essex and the late Thomas Weller.
A February 2, 2012 Harvard Gazette article describes how Weller—who led HSPH’s tropical health department for nearly 30 years—worked in 1948 with Drs. John Enders and Frederick Robbins to grow polio virus in culture for the first time. This work set the stage for the development of polio vaccines by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, and earned Weller, Enders and Robbins the 1954 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
In the early 1980s, Essex, Lasker Professor of Health Sciences and chair of the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative, was the first, with Robert Gallo, to propose that a retrovirus causes AIDS. Essex’ lab has also contributed several other major findings in AIDS research.
Read the Harvard Gazette article
Learn more
Polio (Harvard Public Health Review)
Confronting AIDS (HSPH history)
History of the School (HSPH history)
