Albert Sabin was a Polish-born physician and virologist- a virologist is a scientist who studies viruses. After qualifying as a doctor I 1931, Sabin immediately began research on the nature and cause of polio, a viral infection that can result in death ore paralysis.
Sabin proved that polio viruses not only grew in nerve tissue, as was generally assumed, but that they lived in the small intestines. This discovery indicated that polio might be prevented by a vaccine taken through the mouth.
Albert Sabin will always be remembered as the scientist who developed the live poliovirus vaccine that made eradication of the disease a possibility.
To ensure its safety, Sabin and his colleagues took the vaccine themselves before testing it on others. Sabin also developed vaccines for encephalitis or swelling of the brain, sand-fly fever, and dengue fever- viral diseases transmitted by mosquitoes.
