Enders, John Franklin (1897-1985), a research bacteriologist, shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Frederick C. Robbins and Thomas H. Weller. The three grew poliomyelitis viruses on living human embryonic tissue and neutralized the virus’s cell-changing action with an antibody. They later isolated and typed the three strains of poliovirus (see Poliomyelitis). Enders’s work showed that viruses can be grown outside the body in tissues that they do not usually attack within the body. This work provided a method for producing vaccines to combat the viruses.
In 1930, Enders helped develop typhus vaccine. He also isolated the measles virus and developed a “live” measles virus vaccine (see Measles). He was born on Feb. 10, 1897, in West Hartford, Connecticut. He died on Sept. 8, 1985.
