Science & invention
Thomas Huckle Weller
1915–2008 · virologist, physician
Virologist who shared the 1954 Nobel Prize for growing poliovirus in tissue culture, the step that made polio vaccines possible; born and raised in Ann Arbor.
- Born
Ann Arbor, Michigan- Died
Needham, Massachusetts
aged 93- Also known as
- Thomas Weller
- Detroit years
- 1915–1937
- Field
- Science & invention
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Weller was born in Ann Arbor in 1915 and grew up there as the son of Carl Vernon Weller, a professor of pathology at the University of Michigan. After Ann Arbor High School he studied medical zoology at the university, taking a bachelor's degree in 1936 and a master's in 1937, and then went to Harvard Medical School. Working in John Enders's laboratory at Boston Children's Hospital with Frederick Robbins, he showed in the late 1940s that poliovirus could be grown in cultures of human tissue that were not nerve tissue. That made it practical to produce the virus in quantity, clearing the way for the Salk and Sabin vaccines, and the three men shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Weller went on to isolate the virus behind chickenpox and shingles and, with colleagues, the rubella virus.
Highlights
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1954, with John Enders and Frederick Robbins
- Grew poliovirus in human tissue culture, enabling vaccine production
- Isolated the varicella-zoster virus of chickenpox and shingles
- University of Michigan graduate (BS 1936, MS 1937)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1930s
University of Michigan
He studied medical zoology here, where his father taught pathology.