Thomas Huckle Weller
Thomas Huckle Weller | |
---|---|
Born | (1915-06-15)June 15, 1915 Ann Arbor, Michigan |
Died | August 23, 2008(2008-08-23) (aged 93) Needham, Massachusetts |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Michigan, Harvard Medical School |
Known for | poliomyelitis viruses |
Awards | E. Mead Johnson Award (1953) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1954) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | virology |
Thomas Huckle Weller (June 15, 1915 – August 23, 2008) was an American virologist. He, John Franklin Enders and Frederick Chapman Robbins were awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954 for showing how to cultivate poliomyelitis viruses in a test tube, using a combination of human embryonic skin and muscle tissue.[1]
Weller was born and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then went to the University of Michigan, where his father Carl Vernon Weller was a professor in the Department of Pathology. At Michigan, he studied medical zoology and received a B.S. and an M.S., with his masters thesis on fish parasites. In 1936, Weller entered Harvard Medical School, and in 1939 began working under John Franklin Enders, with whom he would later (along with Frederick Chapman Robbins) share the Nobel Prize. It was Enders who got Weller involved in researching viruses and tissue-culture techniques for determining infectious disease causes. Weller received his MD in 1940, and went to work at Children's Hospital in Boston. In 1942, during World War II, he entered the Army Medical Corps and was stationed at the Antilles Medical Laboratory in Puerto Rico, earning the rank of Major and heading the facility's Departments of Bacteriology, Virology and Parasitology. After the War, he returned to Children's Hospital in Boston, and it was there in 1947, that he rejoined Enders in the newly created Research Division of Infectious Diseases. After several leading positions, in July 1954, he was appointed Tropical Public Health Department head at the Harvard School of Public Health. Weller also served from 1953 to 1959 as director of the Commission on Parasitic Diseases of the American Armed Forces Epidemiological Board. In 1954 he was awarded the George Ledlie prize in recognition of his research on rubella, polio and cytomegalovirus(CMV) viruses.
In addition to his research on polio, for which he won the Nobel Prize, Weller also contributed to treating schistosomiasis, and Coxsackie viruses. He was also the first to isolate the virus responsible for varicella.
In 1945, Weller married Kathleen Fahey, who died in 2011 aged 95. They had two sons and two daughters.
Citations
- Zetterström, Rolf; Lagercrantz, Hugo (2006), "J.F. Enders (1897-1985), T.H. Weller (1915-) and F.C. Robbins (1916-2003): a simplified method for the multiplication of poliomyelitis virus. Dreams of eradicating a terrifying disease.", Acta Paediatr., vol. 95, no. 9 (published Sep 2006), pp. 1026–8, doi:10.1080/08035250600900073, PMID 16938745, S2CID 30811791
- Ligon, B Lee (2002), "Thomas Huckle Weller MD: Nobel Laureate and research pioneer in poliomyelitis, varicella-zoster virus, cytomegalovirus, rubella, and other infectious diseases.", Seminars in Pediatric Infectious Diseases, vol. 13, no. 1 (published Jan 2002), pp. 55–63, doi:10.1053/spid.2002.31314, PMID 12118846
- Kyle, R A; Shampo, M A (1997), "Thomas Huckle Weller and the successful culture of poliovirus.", Mayo Clin. Proc., vol. 72, no. 5 (published May 1997), p. 422, doi:10.1016/s0025-6196(11)64860-x, PMID 9146683
- Bendiner, E (1982), "Enders, Weller, and Robbins: the trio that 'fished in troubled waters'.", Hosp. Pract. (Off. Ed.), vol. 17, no. 1 (published Jan 1982), pp. 163, 169, 174–5 passim, doi:10.1080/21548331.1982.11698030, PMID 6295913
- Sulek, K (1968), "[Nobel prizes for John F. Enders, Frederick Ch, Robbins and Thomas H. Weller in 1954 for discovery of the possibility of growing poliomyelitis virus on various tissue media]", Wiad. Lek., vol. 21, no. 24 (published Dec 15, 1968), pp. 2301–3, PMID 4303387
References
- ^ Thomas Weller, 93; Won Nobel Prize for Polio, Boston Globe, August 25, 2008
External links
- Thomas H. Weller on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1954 The Cultivation of the Poliomyelitis Viruses in Tissue Culture
- Thomas Huckle Weller papers, 1896-2007 (inclusive), 1940-1990 (bulk). H MS c357. Harvard Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.
- v
- t
- e
- 1901: Emil Behring
- 1902: Ronald Ross
- 1903: Niels Finsen
- 1904: Ivan Pavlov
- 1905: Robert Koch
- 1906: Camillo Golgi / Santiago Ramón y Cajal
- 1907: Alphonse Laveran
- 1908: Élie Metchnikoff / Paul Ehrlich
- 1909: Emil Kocher
- 1910: Albrecht Kossel
- 1911: Allvar Gullstrand
- 1912: Alexis Carrel
- 1913: Charles Richet
- 1914: Róbert Bárány
- 1915
- 1916
- 1917
- 1918
- 1919: Jules Bordet
- 1920: August Krogh
- 1921
- 1922: Archibald Hill / Otto Meyerhof
- 1923: Frederick Banting / John Macleod
- 1924: Willem Einthoven
- 1925
- 1926: Johannes Fibiger
- 1927: Julius Wagner-Jauregg
- 1928: Charles Nicolle
- 1929: Christiaan Eijkman / Frederick Gowland Hopkins
- 1930: Karl Landsteiner
- 1931: Otto Warburg
- 1932: Charles Scott Sherrington / Edgar Adrian
- 1933: Thomas Morgan
- 1934: George Whipple / George Minot / William Murphy
- 1935: Hans Spemann
- 1936: Henry Dale / Otto Loewi
- 1937: Albert Szent-Györgyi
- 1938: Corneille Heymans
- 1939: Gerhard Domagk
- 1940
- 1941
- 1942
- 1943: Henrik Dam / Edward Doisy
- 1944: Joseph Erlanger / Herbert Gasser
- 1945: Alexander Fleming / Ernst Chain / Howard Florey
- 1946: Hermann Muller
- 1947: Carl Cori / Gerty Cori / Bernardo Houssay
- 1948: Paul Müller
- 1949: Walter Hess / António Egas Moniz
- 1950: Edward Kendall / Tadeusz Reichstein / Philip Hench
- 1951: Max Theiler
- 1952: Selman Waksman
- 1953: Hans Krebs / Fritz Lipmann
- 1954: John Enders / Thomas Weller / Frederick Robbins
- 1955: Hugo Theorell
- 1956: André Cournand / Werner Forssmann / Dickinson W. Richards
- 1957: Daniel Bovet
- 1958: George Beadle / Edward Tatum / Joshua Lederberg
- 1959: Severo Ochoa / Arthur Kornberg
- 1960: Frank Burnet / Peter Medawar
- 1961: Georg von Békésy
- 1962: Francis Crick / James Watson / Maurice Wilkins
- 1963: John Eccles / Alan Hodgkin / Andrew Huxley
- 1964: Konrad Bloch / Feodor Lynen
- 1965: François Jacob / André Lwoff / Jacques Monod
- 1966: Francis Rous / Charles B. Huggins
- 1967: Ragnar Granit / Haldan Hartline / George Wald
- 1968: Robert W. Holley / Har Khorana / Marshall Nirenberg
- 1969: Max Delbrück / Alfred Hershey / Salvador Luria
- 1970: Bernard Katz / Ulf von Euler / Julius Axelrod
- 1971: Earl Sutherland Jr.
- 1972: Gerald Edelman / Rodney Porter
- 1973: Karl von Frisch / Konrad Lorenz / Nikolaas Tinbergen
- 1974: Albert Claude / Christian de Duve / George Palade
- 1975: David Baltimore / Renato Dulbecco / Howard Temin
- 1976: Baruch Blumberg / Daniel Gajdusek
- 1977: Roger Guillemin / Andrew Schally / Rosalyn Yalow
- 1978: Werner Arber / Daniel Nathans / Hamilton O. Smith
- 1979: Allan Cormack / Godfrey Hounsfield
- 1980: Baruj Benacerraf / Jean Dausset / George Snell
- 1981: Roger Sperry / David H. Hubel / Torsten Wiesel
- 1982: Sune Bergström / Bengt I. Samuelsson / John Vane
- 1983: Barbara McClintock
- 1984: Niels Jerne / Georges Köhler / César Milstein
- 1985: Michael Brown / Joseph L. Goldstein
- 1986: Stanley Cohen / Rita Levi-Montalcini
- 1987: Susumu Tonegawa
- 1988: James W. Black / Gertrude B. Elion / George H. Hitchings
- 1989: J. Michael Bishop / Harold E. Varmus
- 1990: Joseph Murray / E. Donnall Thomas
- 1991: Erwin Neher / Bert Sakmann
- 1992: Edmond Fischer / Edwin G. Krebs
- 1993: Richard J. Roberts / Phillip Sharp
- 1994: Alfred G. Gilman / Martin Rodbell
- 1995: Edward B. Lewis / Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard / Eric F. Wieschaus
- 1996: Peter C. Doherty / Rolf M. Zinkernagel
- 1997: Stanley B. Prusiner
- 1998: Robert F. Furchgott / Louis Ignarro / Ferid Murad
- 1999: Günter Blobel
- 2000: Arvid Carlsson / Paul Greengard / Eric Kandel
- 2001: Leland H. Hartwell / Tim Hunt / Paul Nurse
- 2002: Sydney Brenner / H. Robert Horvitz / John E. Sulston
- 2003: Paul Lauterbur / Peter Mansfield
- 2004: Richard Axel / Linda B. Buck
- 2005: Barry Marshall / Robin Warren
- 2006: Andrew Fire / Craig Mello
- 2007: Mario Capecchi / Martin Evans / Oliver Smithies
- 2008: Harald zur Hausen / Luc Montagnier / Françoise Barré-Sinoussi
- 2009: Elizabeth Blackburn / Carol W. Greider / Jack W. Szostak
- 2010: Robert G. Edwards
- 2011: Bruce Beutler / Jules A. Hoffmann / Ralph M. Steinman (posthumously)
- 2012: John Gurdon / Shinya Yamanaka
- 2013: James Rothman / Randy Schekman / Thomas C. Südhof
- 2014: John O'Keefe / May-Britt Moser / Edvard Moser
- 2015: William C. Campbell / Satoshi Ōmura / Tu Youyou
- 2016: Yoshinori Ohsumi
- 2017: Jeffrey C. Hall / Michael Rosbash / Michael W. Young
- 2018: James P. Allison / Tasuku Honjo
- 2019: Gregg L. Semenza / Peter J. Ratcliffe / William Kaelin Jr.
- 2020: Harvey J. Alter / Michael Houghton / Charles M. Rice
- 2021: David Julius / Ardem Patapoutian
- 2022: Svante Pääbo
- 2023: Katalin Karikó / Drew Weissman