‘His is the firm, clear-eyed face of our scientific age, illuminated with the radiance of a man whose efforts have saved countless children from polio.’ (Karsh)

In 1955 Salk produced the first vaccine for the prevention of poliomyelitis. He first had to develop a method to grow the virus in fertile eggs, then find a way to treat the virus to make it harmless but still capable of stimulating immunity to the infectious form of the virus. Millions of people were successfully immunised with his polio vaccine. His last years were spent searching for a vaccine against AIDS.