Who developed the first vaccine for rabies?

Louis Pasteur developed the first vaccine for rabies. Working with Émile Roux and other colleagues, Pasteur developed a method of weakening rabies virus in infected rabbit nerve tissue and used it to create a preventive treatment in 1885.

The first famous human recipient was nine-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been severely bitten by a dog suspected of having rabies. Beginning on 6 July 1885, Pasteur’s team gave Meister a series of increasingly potent inoculations over roughly eleven days. Meister survived without developing rabies, making the treatment a landmark in medical history.

Pasteur was a chemist rather than a licensed physician, so the decision was medically and legally extraordinary. Licensed doctors Alfred Vulpian and Jacques-Joseph Grancher advised him, and the success made Pasteur internationally celebrated. His laboratory later treated many more exposed patients.

A common mix-up is Edward Jenner, who pioneered smallpox vaccination, not rabies vaccination. Émile Roux also played an important technical role, but Pasteur is the canonical answer because the vaccine was developed and introduced through his laboratory.