The Polio Hall of Fame (or the Polio Wall of Fame) consists of a linear grouping of sculptured busts of fifteen scientists and two laymen who made important contributions to the knowledge and treatment of poliomyelitis. It is found on the outside wall of what is called Founder’s Hall of the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation in Warm Springs, Georgia, USA.
For more information see this Wikipedia page.
| 1 | Jakob Heine (1800-1879) | Discovered and described infantile paralysis in 1840 |
| 2 | Karl Oskar Medin (1847-1927) | Recognized and described polio as an acute infection (1890) |
| 3 | Ivar Wickman (1872-1914) | Discovered the epidemic character of polio (1907) and coined the term Heine-Medin disease; also showed a high prevalence of non-paralytic polio |
| 4 | Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943) | Discovered poliovirus and demonstrated transmission to monkeys |
| 5 | Thomas Milton Rivers (1888-1962) | Chairman of the National Foundation committee on vaccination which planned the successful 1954 vaccine field trials |
| 6 | Charles Armstrong (1886-1967) | A Public Health Service physician, Armstrong discovered in 1939 that poliovirus can be transmitted to cotton rats, and started self-tests with nasal spray vaccination |
| 7 | John R Paul (1893-1972) | Made essential contributions to the knowledge of how polio is spread |
| 8 | Albert Sabin (1906-1993) | A leader in the search for a live virus vaccine for polio, Sabin helped show how the virus reached the central nervous system |
| 9 | Thomas Francis Jr (1900-1969) | An epidemiologist at the University of Michigan and Salk’s (No. 15) tutor; recognized the effectiveness of the Salk vaccine |
| 10 | Joseph L Melnick (1914-2001) | Developed immunity measures for populations exposed to the virus |
| 11 | Isabel Morgan (1911-1996) | Prepared an experimental vaccine from virus inactivated with formaldehyde which protected monkeys against paralytic polio |
| 12 | Howard A Howe | The first to show that chimpanzees can acquire polio infection by mouth; carried out small-scale experiments in humans with a formalin-treated vaccine |
| 13 | David Bodian (1910-1992) | Showed that the virus gets into the blood stream before reaching the central nervous system and therefore could be blocked by antibodies in the blood |
| 14 | John F Enders (1897-1985) | Led the way in finding how to grow polio viruses in cultures of non-nervous tissue, which made possible the production of a safe and effective vaccine in quantity |
| 15 | Jonas E Salk (1914-1995) | Developed the vaccine which bears his name |
| 16 | Franklin D Roosevelt (1882-1945) | Founded the Warm Springs Foundation in 1927 and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) in 1938 |
| 17 | Basil O'Connor (1892-1972) | The architect of the fight against polio, O'Connor was president of the NFIP from its outset in 1938 and of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation after 1945 |