Today is the birthday of microbiologist Thomas Francis Jr., born in Gas City, Indiana (1900). T.F., as he was known to his friends, grew up in western Pennsylvania and studied medicine at Yale. He graduated in 1925. His early research projects involved bacterial pneumonia, but he was particularly interested in the study of viruses. He was the first American to isolate the human influenza virus.
He joined the University of Michigan in its newly formed School of Public Health in 1941. It was here that he developed the first flu vaccine, which used the dead influenza virus to provoke an immune response in the human body. Francis had discovered in 1940 that there was more than one kind of flu virus. That's why epidemiologists release a different flu vaccine every year, based on their predictions of which strains will be dominant. It's estimated that Francis's flu vaccine has directly saved more than a million lives.
While he was teaching at the University of Michigan, Francis established a virology lab to study viruses. One of his first students in the lab was Jonas Salk. Francis taught his student how to develop vaccines, and Salk eventually went on to develop a vaccine against polio. Francis designed the massive nationwide field trial that proved the effectiveness and safety of Salk's vaccine.
Francis also founded the University of Michigan's Department of Epidemiology, to study how diseases are spread through populations and develop ways of controlling outbreaks. Francis said: "Epidemiology must constantly seek imaginative and ingenious teachers and scholars to create a new genre of medical ecologists who, with both the fine sensitivity of the scientific artist and the broad perception of the community sculptor, can interpret the interplay of forces which result in disease."
https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/the-writers-almanac-for-tuesday-july-15-2025/
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