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Jonas Salk: the man behind the lab coat

1,251 views · Published 30 June 2015 · 3:57 · Indexed 4 November 2026

Channel: Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press) · 2015 · Education

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Although most recognized for his work on the polio vaccine, author Charlotte Jacobs speaks about the man behind the lab coat and some of Salk’s other aspirations. http://global.oup.com/academic/product/jonas-salk-9780199334414

In the first complete biography of Jonas Salk, Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs unravels Salk's story to reveal an unconventional scientist and a misunderstood and vulnerable man. Despite his incredible success in developing the polio vaccine, Salk was ostracized by his fellow scientists, who accused him of failing to give proper credit to other researchers and scorned his taste for media attention. Even before success catapulted him into the limelight, Salk was an inscrutable man disliked by many of his peers. Driven by an intense desire to aid mankind, he was initially oblivious and eventually resigned to the personal cost--as well as the costs suffered by his family and friends. And yet Salk remained, in the eyes of the public, an adored hero. Based on hundreds of personal interviews and unprecedented access to Salk's sealed archives, Jacobs' biography offers the most complete picture of this complicated figure.

Charlotte D. Jacobs, M.D. is the Ben and A. Jess Shenson Professor of Medicine (Emerita) at Stanford University. She has served as Senior Associate Dean and as Director of the Clinical Cancer Center, and is the author of Henry Kaplan and the Story of Hodgkin's Disease.

© Oxford University Press

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