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Max Theiler
(1899 - 1972)
South African-born American microbiologist who won the 1951 Nobel Prize
for Physiology or Medicine for his development of a vaccine against
yellow fever.
Theiler received his medical training at St. Thomas' Hospital, London,
and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, graduating in
1922. In that year he joined the department of tropical medicine at
the Harvard Medical School, Boston. Yellow fever had been controlled
in some areas by attacking the mosquito populations that carried it,
but Theiler sought to produce a vaccine against the virus that caused
the disease. An early breakthrough in his research came when he discovered
that mice were susceptible to the virus; this made it possible for him
to collect a far larger amount of data on the disease than he could
working with more expensive animals. From 1930 to 1964 Theiler conducted
his research at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now
Rockefeller University), New York City, where with his associates he
developed the improved (17-D) vaccine, which finally eliminated yellow
fever as a major disease of humans.
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