Albert Sabin

Albert Bruce Sabin was a Polish-American medical researcher, best known for developing the oral polio vaccine, which has played a key role in nearly eradicating the disease. In 1969–72, he served as the president of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Abram Saperstejn, later Albert Sabin, was born on August 26, 1906 in Białystok, Russian Empire, to Polish-Jewish parents, Jacob Saperstejn and Tillie Krugman. In 1921, he emigrated with his family on the SS Lapland which sailed from Antwerp, Belgium, to the Port of New York. In 1930, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States and changed his name to Sabin, as well as assuming the middle name Bruce. He graduated from high school in Paterson, New Jersey.

Sabin began university in a dentistry program, but was interested in virology and changed majors. He received a bachelor's degree in science in 1928 and a medical degree in 1931 from New York University.

Sabin trained in internal medicine, pathology, and surgery at Bellevue Hospital in New York City from 1931 to 1933. In 1934, he conducted research at The Lister Institute for Preventive Medicine in England, then joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University). During this time, he developed an intense interest in research, especially in the area of infectious diseases.

In 1939, he moved to Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. During World War II, he was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and helped develop a vaccine against Japanese encephalitis. Maintaining his association with Children's Hospital, by 1946, he had also become the head of Pediatric Research at the University of Cincinnati. At Cincinnati's Children's Hospital, Sabin supervised the fellowship of Robert M. Chanock, whom he called his "star scientific son."

Sabin went on a fact-finding trip to Cuba in 1967 to discuss with Cuban officials the possibility of establishing a collaborative relationship between the United States and Cuba through their respective national academies of sciences, in spite of the fact that the two countries did not have formal diplomatic ties.

In 1969–72, he lived in Israel, serving as President of Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. After his return to the United States, he worked (1974–82) as a research professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. He later moved to Washington, D.C. area, where he was a resident scholar at the John E. Fogarty International Center on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

In 1983, Sabin developed calcification of the cervical spine, which caused paralysis and intense pain. Sabin revealed in a television interview that the experience had made him decide to spend the rest of his life working on alleviating pain. This condition was successfully treated by surgery conducted at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1992 when Sabin was 86. A year later, Sabin died in Washington, D.C., from heart failure.