Zee Media Bureau/Shruti Saxena
New Delhi: Google on Tuesday celebrated the 100th birthday of Dr Jonas Salk - the American medical researcher and virologist who discovered and developed the first successful inactivated polio vaccine - with a doodle on its homepage.
Visitors were greeted with a doodle on the Google search page which depicts the scientist standing on a street with children playing around him. Two kids are also depicted holding a placard saying, "Thank you Dr Salk".
The virologist was born in New York City on October 28, 1914. As a child, though Salk had little formal education, his parents were determined to see their child succeed. He graduated from New York University School of Medicine in 1939 with his MD degree.
Salk started working on the polio vaccine. He was able to identify three different polio viruses. It was only in the year 1955 that the vaccine was considered as safe for use.
It was in 1957 when his vaccine was intorduced and before then, polio was seen as a serious public health problem for the post-war United States.
Salk died due to heart failure at age 80 on 23 June, 1995.
