Search results
Maurice Ralph Hilleman (August 30, 1919 – April 11, 2005) was a leading American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity.
- Vaccines
- Hilleman’S First Vaccine
- Preventing An Influenza Pandemic
- Dozens of New Vaccines
- New Discoveries
- Some Personal Details and The End
Maurice Hilleman was the greatest inventor of vaccines the world has ever known. His vaccines were based on the idea used by earlier scientists such as Louis Pasteur, that you could take a virus and weaken it. The virus would then be too weak to cause disease, but would push people’s immune systems into producing natural antibodies. These antibodie...
Hilleman joined the pharmaceutical company E. R. Squibb in New Jersey in 1944. He developed an effective vaccine against Japanese B encephalitis and worked on the mass production of influenza vaccine.
In 1948, age 28, Hilleman moved to Washington, D.C. to join the Department of Respiratory Diseases at Army Medical Center. There he became an authority on mutation in influenza viruses, observing two different mechanisms for genetic changes in influenza: drift, a gradual annual change in the virus; and shift, a less frequent but more dramatic chang...
In 1957, age 38, Hilleman was recruited by the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. He moved to West Point, Pennsylvania, from where he would lead Merck’s virus and vaccination research programs for the next 45 years. At Merck he had unprecedented success, inventing a series of highly effect new vaccines to protect people against measles, mumps, rube...
Hilleman was the discoverer or co-discoverer of several viruses. These included hepatitis A, SV40, and a number of adenoviruses and rhinoviruses. He was the first scientist to purify the drug interferon and he discovered that interferon’s expression is induced by double-stranded RNA.
In 1943, age 23, Hilleman married Thelma Mason with whom he had two daughters, Jeryl Lynn and Kirsten. Thelma died in 1962. In 1963 Hilleman married Lorraine Witmer. Hilleman had a reputation as a tough and at times ill-tempered man. He worked seven-day weeks and expected people he directed at Merck to do likewise. Anyone who didn’t measure up to h...
May 29, 2020 · In March 1963, Hilleman’s five-year-old daughter, Jeryl Lynn, stumbled into his room in the middle of the night and complained about a sore throat and swollen jaw. She had contracted mumps.
Aug 27, 2016 · Maurice Ralph Hilleman (1919–2005) was one of the greatest microbiologists/vaccinologists of all time. He played a key role in developing vaccines for Asian flu in 1957 and Hong Kong flu in 1968.
- Theodore H. Tulchinsky, Theodore H. Tulchinsky
- 10.1016/B978-0-12-804571-8.00003-2
- 2018
- 2018
Hilleman's one-year-old daughter Kirsten (center, with her sister Jeryl Lynn and Dr. Robert Weibel) became the first to receive the mumps vaccine.
Maurice Ralph Hilleman (August 30, 1919 – April 11, 2005) was a leading American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity. According to one estimate, his vaccines save nearly eight million lives each year.
People also ask
Who was Maurice Hilleman?
Who is Dr. Hilleman?
Who is Chris Hillman married to?
What was Hilleman's thesis on Chlamydia trachomatis?
May 6, 2013 · At 1 a.m. on March 21, 1963, an intense, irascible but modest Merck scientist named Maurice R. Hilleman was asleep at his home in the Philadelphia suburb of Lafayette Hill when his 5-year-old...
