Which scientist created the first vaccine against rabies in 1885?

Louis Pasteur created the first successful rabies vaccine in 1885.

Pasteur and his collaborators developed the vaccine by weakening rabies virus preparations through laboratory passage and drying infected nervous tissue. On 6 July 1885, they treated Joseph Meister, a nine-year-old boy who had been severely bitten by a rabid dog. The treatment involved a series of increasingly potent injections and was followed by the boy’s survival.

Rabies is usually fatal once clinical symptoms appear, so post-exposure treatment must begin before the disease reaches the nervous system. Pasteur’s work demonstrated that vaccination could be used after exposure when a pathogen has a long incubation period.

Pasteur is also closely associated with germ theory, pasteurization, and vaccines for anthrax and chicken cholera. A common error is to describe him as the inventor of vaccination itself; that earlier milestone belongs to Edward Jenner’s smallpox work in 1796.