Thomas Weller

Weller, working with John Enders and Frederick Robbins at Boston Children's Hospital in 1949, demonstrated that poliovirus could be propagated in cultures of non-nervous tissue—specifically human embryonic skin and muscle cells. Previously, poliovirus was thought to grow only in nerve tissue, which made large-scale virus production impossible. This tissue-culture breakthrough enabled Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin to mass-produce the killed and oral polio vaccines.

Weller shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with John Enders and Frederick Robbins, his colleagues at the Children's Medical Center in Boston. Enders was the senior investigator leading the lab, while Weller and Robbins were the junior researchers who adapted the tissue-culture technique. The prize was awarded just one year before Salk's polio vaccine was declared safe and effective.

Yes, after the polio breakthrough, Weller went on to isolate cytomegalovirus (CMV) from human cell cultures, identifying it as a distinct human pathogen. He also contributed to the study of varicella-zoster virus and rubella using tissue-culture methods. His laboratory at Harvard's School of Public Health continued to apply the Enders-Weller-Robbins technique to a range of viral diseases.

Weller conducted the poliovirus tissue-culture work in the Research Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children's Medical Center in Boston, which was affiliated with Harvard Medical School. He was working under John Enders in Enders' laboratory when the poliovirus cultivation experiments were performed. Weller later became chair of the Department of Tropical Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.