Albert Bruce Sabin (1906–1993), the man who made the oral polio vaccine

Sabin’s name will always be associated with poliomyelitis, a disease that claimed millions of victims in the 20th century, particularly among children. At the beginning of the polio eradication initiative in 1988, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that ≈350,000 cases of paralytic polio were still occurring each year and that in the prevaccine era ≈650,000 cases occurred each year.

It was his mentor, William Hallock Park, famous for his research into a diphtheria vaccine, who in 1931 first urged Sabin to study poliomyelitis. In that year, Sabin had just finished his medical studies and polio was again raging in the United States, causing ≈17,000 cases of disease annually.