The man who developed 40 vaccines
Maurice Hilleman, PhD’44, and his flu research team at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1957. Then (as now) scientists incubated influenza and other viruses inside eggs to produce vaccines. (Photography by Ed Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)
Maurice Hilleman, PhD’44, was born in 1919 near Miles City, Montana, during the deadliest influenza pandemic in history. When the next global influenza pandemic arrived, Hilleman was in the position to save thousands of lives, thanks in part to his Montana roots.
Before Hilleman, who died in April 2005, became the world’s most prolific vaccinologist, with a portfolio including vaccines for measles, hepatitis, meningitis, and more, he was a farm boy. His family sold fruit, poultry, and eggs to make ends meet through the Great Depression. He briefly worked at J. C. Penney, but his brother convinced him to apply for a scholarship to college.
After graduating first in his class at Montana State University and earning a doctorate in microbiology at the University of Chicago, he joined pharmaceutical company E. R. Squibb—much to his mentors’ chagrin. Chicago graduates were expected to become academics, he explained during an interview for Paul Offit’s 2007 biography Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases (Smithsonian Books). But Hilleman had had enough of the academy. “I came off a farm,” he said. “I wanted to make things!”
