Jonas Salk By Carlee Paterson

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Jonas Edward Salk is a hero to the world, he invented the very first polio vaccine. Although he died long ago, he will be remembered as a great hero to the world.

Jonas Salk was born on October 28, 1914. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants that had run from their old country for a new life in America. Their names were Daniel and Dora Salk. His family was poor. At a young age, Jonas was considered brilliant. He loved books, and was good at reading, but was not very good at sports because he was rather small. At the age of 15, he graduated from high school, and decided to become a lawyer. A little while later, he changed his mind and decided to use his brilliant skills to study medicine instead.

Jonas Salk enrolled in the Medical School of New York University. Researching the flu virus allowed him to accumulate knowledge that led him to discovering the polio disease. When invited, Salk went to the University of Pittsburgh Medical School. His knowledge then directed itself to the polio disease. At the greatest influence of the polio season, the summer of 1950, Salk was too busy to do anything else except work day and night in his laboratory to try and stop this horrifying, crippling disease.

Everybody hailed him as a great miracle worker when his vaccine came out in 1955. Though every one did this, he preferred to stay "shy of the public eye". In addition to that, he declined to apply for a patent for the vaccine and insisted that he was more concerned with people having success with it, and not catching it, than he was with the money that he would make. He had worked on the vaccine for eight years.

Salk had gotten married twice, and had three sons. His first wife was Dona Lindsay who was a social worker. They had three children. His three sons names were Peter, Darrell, and Jonathan. They too grew up to be medical researchers. In 1968 they got divorced, and in 1970 he got remarried to Francoise Gilot. He was a very caring man.

Later, he started the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, that allowed others to conduct their research as well.

He was very concerned for poor people in other countries, and he worked with international organizations to help vaccines get to people in other countries.

Jonas won a great many awards for his work on the polio vaccine. In 1977 was the most important a award he received. It was the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by president Jimmy Carter. "Because of Dr. Jonas E. Salk our country is free from the cruel epidemics of polio myelitis that once struck almost yearly...", President Jimmy Carter had said when giving his speech. In honor of his birthday, October 24, was made World Polio Day.

Jonas Salk was only forty-five when he discovered the polio vaccine. His second project, that lasted up until his death, was to find a cure for AIDS. He died of heart failure on June 23, 1995. He was eighty. Although he does not walk the earth today, what he did for the world, his contributions to science and math, and his generosity for the world still live on.

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