Jonas Salk : A Life

When a waiting world learned on April 12, 1955, that Jonas Salk had created a vaccine that could prevent poliomyelitis, he became a hero overnight. Jubilation erupted worldwide, with Salk as the focus. Born in a New York tenement, humble in manner, Salk had all the makings of a twentieth-century icon--a white knight in a white coat. In the wake of his achievement, he received a staggering number of awards, a Congressional Gold Medal, a Presidential Citation; for years his name ranked with Gandhi and Churchill on lists of the most revered people. And yet the one group whose adulation he craved--the scientific community--remained ominously silent. "The worst tragedy that could have befallen me was my success," Salk later said. "I knew right away that I was through--cast out." In the first complete biography of Jonas Salk, Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs unravels his complexities and nuances to reveal an unconventional scientist and a misunderstood and vulnerable man. Despite his incredible success, all but eradicating a crippling disease from the world, Salk was ostracized by the scientific community. Its esteemed members accused him of two transgressions: failing to give proper credit to other researchers, and crossing the imaginary line of academic decorum by soliciting media attention. Even before his success catapulted him into the limelight, Salk was an enigmatic man disliked by many of his peers. Driven by an intense desire to aid mankind, Jacobs writes, 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. Was Jonas Salk an American saint or a self-absorbed man who connived to assure himself a place in medical history? Granted unprecedented access to Salk's sealed archives and having conducted hundreds of personal interviews, Jacobs offers a more complete picture of the complicated figure than has previously existed. Salk's full