Each time a mother takes her child to the doctor's office for a checkup, she likely leaves with the fruits of Maurice Hilleman's career -- vaccines that have helped put an end to childhood miseries.
The man credited with saving more lives than any other scientist in the past century, microbiologist Maurice R. Hilleman, died on Monday,April 12, 2006 in Philadelphia. He was 85.
Over his career, the Miles City, Mont., native led or began the development of vaccines against diseases that once killed or hospitalized millions, including measles, German measles, meningitis, pneumonia, bacterial meningitis and hepatitis A and B. He began work on the mumps vaccine after his daughter, Jeryl Lynn, developed the illness at age 5 in 1963.
"Maurice Hilleman will be historically remembered as the vaccinologist of the 20th century," Dr. Robert C. Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, said in a prepared statement. "His name will be joined forever with people like Pasteur and Koch in the story of man's strivings against pathogens."
Hilleman worked for Whitehouse Station-based Merck & Co. Inc. for nearly 30 years before retiring in 1984 as senior vice president of Merck Research Labs in West Point, Pa., the pharmaceutical company said.
Hilleman joined Merck in 1957 as head of its new virus and cell biology research department, after a decade as chief of respiratory diseases at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
He is credited with developing more vaccines than any person. He also was a co-discoverer of the adenoviruses, and discovered changes in the flu virus known as "drift." By monitoring these changes, public health agencies now track new flu viruses and create vaccines to prevent them.
"His work has saved literally millions of lives and has protected many millions more from disease," said Dr. Adel F. Mahmoud, president of Merck Vaccines. "Dr. Maurice Hilleman is one of the true scientific leaders of our time."
Hilleman was a longtime adviser to the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Vaccine Program and the National Institutes of Health's Office of AIDS Research Program Evaluation. He was a member of several prestigious scientific groups, including the U.S. National Academy of Science, and was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Ronald Reagan in July
1988.
He is survived by his wife Lorraine, daughters Kirsten of New York City and Jeryl Lynn of Palo Alto, Calif., and five grandchildren. Merck said it is planning a public memorial service.
[break=About Dr. Maurice Hilleman]
About Dr. Maurice Hilleman 
Maurice Ralph Hilleman, (August 30 1919 – April 11 2005), was an American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed more than three dozen vaccines, more than any other scientist. Of the fourteen vaccines routinely recommended, he developed eight: those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria. He also played a role in the discovery of the cold-producing adenoviruses, the hepatitis viruses and the cancer-causing virus SV40.
According to Dr. Adel F. Mahmoud, president of Merck Vaccines, Dr. Hilleman's work has saved millions of lives, and protected millions more from disease. It has been estimated that his work has saved more individual lives than that of any other scientist.
Dr. Hilleman was born on a farm near the high plains town of Miles City, Montana. His mother and twin sister died when he was born. He credits much of his success to his work with chickens as a boy. Chicken eggs are used to develop vaccines based on weakened viruses.
When he was in the eighth grade, he discovered Charles Darwin, and was caught reading The Origin of Species in church. Due to lack of money, he almost failed to attend college. His eldest brother interceded, and Hilleman graduated from Montana State University on a scholarship. He won a fellowship to the University of Chicago and received his doctoral degree in microbiology in 1941.
After joining E.R. Squibb & Sons, he developed a vaccine against Japanese B encephalitis, a disease that threatened American troops in the Pacific Theater during World War II. As chief of the Department of Respiratory Diseases, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research from 1948 to 1951, he discovered the genetic changes that occur when the influenza virus mutates, known as shift and drift. That helped him to recognize that an outbreak of flu in Hong Kong could become a huge pandemic. Working on a hunch, he and a colleague found (after nine 14-hour days) that it was a new strain of flu that could kill millions. Forty million doses of vaccines were prepared and distributed. Although 69,000 Americans died, the pandemic could have resulted in many more U.S. deaths.
In 1957 Dr. Hilleman joined Merck & Co. as head of its new virus and cell biology research department at Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. It was while with Merck that Hilleman developed most of the 40 experimental and licensed animal and human vaccines he is credited with, working both at the laboratory bench as well as providing scientific leadership. He retired from Merck in 1984 as senior vice president of the Merck Research Labs in West Point, Pennsylvania.
In 1963 his daughter Jeryl Lynn came down with the mumps. He cultivated material from her, and used it as the basis of a mumps vaccine. The Jeryl-Lynn strain of the mumps vaccine is still used today.
Dr. Hilleman served on numerous national and international advisory boards and committees, academic, governmental and private, including the National Institutes of Health's Office of AIDS Research Program Evaluation and the National Vaccine Advisory Committee of the National Vaccine Program. In his later life, Hilleman was an adviser to the World Health Organization.
He was an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Science, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In 1988 President Ronald Reagan presented him with the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor. He received the Prince Mahidol Award from the King of Thailand for the advancement of public health, as well as a special lifetime achievement award from the World Health Organization, the Lasker Medical Research Award and the Sabin Gold Medal and Lifetime Achievement Awards.
In March of 2005 the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, in collaboration with The Merck Company Foundation, announced the creation of The Maurice R. Hilleman Chair in Vaccinology.
At the time of his death on April 11, 2005, at the age of 85, Dr. Hilleman was Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.
[break=Father of Vaccinology]
Edward Jenner -
Father of Vaccinology 
- Born: 17 May 1749
- Birthplace: Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England
- Died: 26 January 1823
- Best Known As: English doctor who introduced smallpox vaccinations
Edward Jenner was an English physician who is credited with successfully introducing the practice of vaccinating against smallpox. Jenner, apprenticed to a surgeon as a boy, studied medicine briefly in London before returning to his rural hometown to open his own medical practice (1792). Following up on local lore that said dairymaids who had contracted cowpox were immune to smallpox, Jenner decided to see if he could adapt the Turkish practice of inoculation to prevent the spread and devastation of smallpox.
In May of 1796 he took a gamble and inoculated James Phipps, the 8 year-old son of a local farmer. Phipps was exposed to fluid from the pustules of a woman with cowpox. The boy contracted cowpox, and several weeks later Jenner exposed him to smallpox. Fortunately, the boy didn't contract smallpox and Jenner's theory was proved correct. After other successful trials, Jenner published his findings in
Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae in 1798.
Jenner went on to become famous as the world embraced "vaccination," a term he coined (because
vacca is Latin for cow, and
vaccinia was the term for cowpox). Jenner was also an educated naturalist and horticulturist, an amateur geologist and zoologist (he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society for a paper on the nesting habits of the cuckoo) and a fossil hunter who discovered the bones of a plesiosaur in 1819.
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