If you’ve checked out Google’s homepage Tuesday, you may have noticed a special tribute to La Jolla’s most famous doctor: Jonas Salk.
The inventor of the polio vaccine and founder of the Salk Institute in La Jolla would have been 100 today. Salk died in 1995.
The Google doodle gives a nod to his biggest accomplishment, depicting the scientist standing among presumably polio-free children who are holding a “Thank you, Dr. Salk!” sign.
The medical world is remembering Salk for his groundbreaking work battling polio, a viral disease that can attack the nerve cells. After his injectable vaccine came on the market, the U.S. saw a dramatic drop in polio cases in the mid-1950s.
Over the next decades, nations used his vaccine and an oral version of it to nearly eradicate the virus worldwide, though pockets of polio still exist in Afghanistan, Nigeria Pakistan, the Horn of Africa Cameroon and Syria, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say.
With the U.S. almost entirely freed from the disease, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May 6, 1985, to be “Jonas Salk Day.”
In the 1960s, Salk established an institute in his name at the campus of UC San Diego. His goal was to “make it possible for biologists and others to work together in a collaborative environment that would encourage them to consider the wider implications of their discoveries for the future of humanity,” according to a spokeswoman for the organization.
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The Salk Institute has since worked on potential new therapies and treatments for cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disorders, brain issues and birth defects.
