Maurice Hilleman

He was born on a farm outside Miles City, Montana, the eighth child. His twin sister died the day they were born and his mother two days after that, and an uncle down the road took him in. He worked chickens, which he later named as the reason for everything after, because a fertile hen egg was where you grew a virus. In the eighth grade he was caught reading On the Origin of Species in church, and he gave up religion for good later on. Money nearly kept him out of college until his oldest brother intervened. He finished first in his class at Montana State in 1941 and took a Chicago doctorate in 1944, proving that the infections everyone blamed on a virus came from a bacterium.

At Squibb he made a vaccine against Japanese B encephalitis for troops in the Pacific. At the Army Medical Center from 1948 he worked out how influenza mutates, the shift and the drift, and drew the conclusion that people were going to need a fresh flu shot every year, which is why they now get one. In 1957 he saw early that an outbreak in Hong Kong could become a pandemic, spent nine 14-hour days with a colleague confirming it was a new strain, and got 40 million doses made and distributed. He moved to Merck that same year and stayed. Of the 14 vaccines now routinely given to American children, eight are his: measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningococcus, pneumococcus and Haemophilus influenzae.

He ran the laboratory as a unit under his command, swore at people, and kept a row of shrunken heads on a shelf in his office, fakes his own children had made, one for every employee he had fired. He refused to attend the charm school Merck required of its middle managers. His subordinates were fiercely loyal to him. The vaccines were tested the way vaccines were tested then. The mumps and measles work went into children with intellectual disabilities living in group homes, chosen because the crowding and poor hygiene put them at high risk of catching the diseases anyway. The mumps strain came from inside his own house. He cultivated it from material taken from his daughter Jeryl Lynn when she came down with the illness in 1963, and the Jeryl Lynn strain is still in the shot.

None of it carries his name. He named no vaccine and no discovery after himself, and when he died in Philadelphia on April 11, 2005, at 85, most of the people who owed him their children's health had never heard of him. Robert Gallo said that year that nobody had done more for human health with less recognition. Anthony Fauci, writing a biographical memoir in 2007, called him perhaps the single most influential public health figure of the 20th century. Paul Offit published a biography the same year. Merck named a manufacturing plant for him in 2008, Montana State named a scholarship program for him in 2016, and a documentary came out that year too.

Maurice Hilleman's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Japanese B encephalitis vaccine discovery
  Made at E.R. Squibb for American troops in the Pacific —
• Antigenic shift and antigenic drift discovery
  Why the influenza vaccine has to be remade every year —
• Asian influenza vaccine discovery
  40 million doses prepared and distributed. 69,000 Americans died anyway. 1957
• Mumps vaccine, Jeryl Lynn strain discovery
  Grown from his own daughter's infection and still in use 1963
• MMR vaccine discovery
  The first licensed vaccine to carry more than one live virus strain —
• Hepatitis B vaccine discovery
  Licensed 1981, withdrawn 1986 and replaced by a yeast-grown version. He called it his best work. 1981

• August 30, 1919 aged 0 Born on a Montana farm — his twin sister and his mother die within three days
• 1941 aged ~22 Graduates first in his class at Montana State He had nearly missed college for lack of money until his eldest brother stepped in.
• 1944 aged ~25 Takes a Chicago doctorate showing chlamydia is bacterial, not viral
• 1948 aged ~29 Becomes chief of respiratory diseases at the Army Medical Center Where he identified antigenic shift and drift.
• 1957 aged ~38 Calls the Hong Kong influenza outbreak a pandemic in the making Nine 14-hour days of work, then 40 million doses.
• 1957 aged ~38 Joins Merck to head its new virus and cell biology department He stayed for the rest of his working life.
• 1963 aged ~44 His daughter Jeryl Lynn gets mumps and he takes a sample The strain named for her is still in the vaccine.
• 1984 aged ~65 Hits Merck's mandatory retirement age at 65 and starts a new institute He ran the Merck Institute for Vaccinology for 20 more years.
• April 11, 2005 aged 85 Dies in Philadelphia at 85 No vaccine and no discovery carries his name.

• Jonas Salk 1914–1995
  Medical researcher who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine. warned that his polio vaccine carried a monkey virus
• Albert Sabin 1906–1993
  Medical researcher who developed the oral polio vaccine used in worldwide eradication campaigns. same warning about the oral vaccine
• Anthony Fauci b. 1940
  Physician-scientist who shaped federal responses to HIV/AIDS, emerging infections, and the COVID-19 pandemic. wrote his biographical memoir
• Walter Reed 1851–1902
  Army physician whose commission confirmed mosquito transmission of yellow fever and transformed disease control. the institute where he found the flu's drift
• Charles Drew 1904–1950
  Physician-scientist whose work on blood plasma and blood banking saved countless lives. another American whose work outran his fame