(1914 – 1996) Doctor/medical researcher who led the team that discovered the first viable polio vaccine. Son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Salk became a public hero despite reserve within the wider scientific and medical community. His vaccine, based on dead virus, received wide use after 1954 until it was replaced by Albert Sabin’s oral, livevirus vaccine. As a public celebrity, Salk founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, which he envisioned as a center for research and philosophy In the 1990s, he also became interested in a similar AIDS vaccine.