Jan 30, 2023
Max Theiler was born on January 30, 1899. A South African-American virologist and physician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951 for developing a vaccine against yellow fever in 1937, becoming the first African-born Nobel laureate. His team rapidly completed the development of the vaccine, and worked with the Rockefeller Foundation to produce more than 28 million doses of the vaccine, finally ending yellow fever as a major disease. In 1937, Theiler discovered a virus that caused paralysis in mice, the study of which now serves as a standard model for studying multiple sclerosis.