SABIN, Albert B.

Albert Bruce Sabin, the American microbiologists, is known throughout the world for his work in viral diseases. Millions of people now are protected from paralytic polio because of Sabin vaccine.

Albert Sabin was born near Bialystok, Russia (later Poland), on August 26, 1906, one of four children. When he was not quite 15, he came to the United States with his family. They settled in Paterson, New Jersey.

When he graduated from the New York University College of Medicine in 1931, Sabin already knew that medical research was to be his life work. He began his research in human poliomyelitis at New York University and continued it over the next 25 years. His work on polio was interrupted during World War II, when he had the opportunity to engage in microbe hunting on worldwide scale. As a major and later as a lieutenant colonel i the United States Army Medical Corps, he traveled with troops to remote areas of the globe. During these years he made important contributions to medical knowledge of the American and Japanese types of insect-borne encephalitis, sandfly fever, and dengue.

In 1951, Dr. Sabin resumed his polio studies. He bred millions of viruses in his laboratory. From the he developed a vaccine made up of greatly weakened living polio viruses. Previously, other scientists also had developed live virus vaccines to be taken by mouth. But the Sabin material proved to be the first completely successful oral vaccine. Its safety and value established, the vaccine was adopted for general use by the Soviet Union in 1960. The following year the United States Public Health Service approved it. By the middle of 1965 more than 350,000,000 persons all over the world had received the Sabin vaccine.

Dr. Sabin has worked in many fields of microbiology besides polio research. He has contributed hundreds of papers to scientific degrees from universities throughout the world ad honors and awards from governments. Among these awards are the Legion of Merit Lasker Clinical Research Award.

Dr. Sabin also holds the position of Distinguished Service Professor of Research Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Cincinnati, Ohio. His laboratory is located at the Children's Hospital Research Foundation. There he is chief of the Division of Virology and Cancer Research.

See also: Sabin Vaccine Institute | Microbiology | New York city | Ohio state