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Virologists study a world of marvels, a world measured by the millimicron (a twenty-five millionth of an inch) and yet big enough to hold the mystery of life. How do a few hundred molecules from dead chemistry become a virus that can replicate itself, and mutate, and is thus most definitely alive?
In this short period of mushrooming knowledge, vaccines against one of the most feared of viral diseases, poliomyelitis, have been made and given to hundreds of millions of people. Influenza, which has staged two deadly worldwide onslaughts in this century, threatens a renewed attack this fall and winter, but virology has devised vaccines to fight it. There is solid hope that measles may soon be controlled, if not conquered outright, by a vaccine, no mean accomplishment. Long neglected and underrated, mainly because it is one of the supposedly unavoidable children's diseases, measles is a universal plague. In backward parts of the world it is a major killer. In the U.S. it kills an estimated 800 a year, and permanently disables 2,500. At an international symposium on measles in Washington last week, Nobel Prizewinner John F. Enders hailed the victory over measles. "Man," he said, "has been searching for an effective measles vaccine for over 200 years." Now, "by a fresh approach to an old objective." a measles vaccine has been developed that has proved effective in 96% of the children inoculated.
Virology's Thinker. Progress in virology is the work of many men, microbiologists, chemists and doctors of medicine, and in this task Harvard University's John Enders plays a unique part. He is, by virtue of temperament and academic qualifications, one of the deepest thinkers in virology. A philosopher of natural science, his contributions have been long-leap deductions and intuitions that guide other men's research, hypotheses that bypass a thousand experiments.
Enders' laboratory in the Jimmy Fund Building on Boston's Binney and Black-fan Streets, part of the Children's Hospital Medical Center, reflects the man and his methods. His corner office is lined with books, and contains a big table that offers plenty of room for papers and makes a good base for sandwich-luncheon conferences with his staff. Down one whole wall runs a long laboratory bench with a Bunsen burner that doubles for making instant coffee and two microscopes : a brass monocular antique that Enders keeps for sentiment's sake, and a modern binocular through which he checks virus damage to cells in tissue cultures. His group of laboratories, eight rooms, is small by modern, crash-program standards, and Enders runs the whole plant on a penurious $110,000 a year. As befits a man of some inherited wealth who cares little for what money buys, he lives comfortably but unostentatiously in a Brookline home with his second wife Carolyn.