Who developed the vaccine for polio?

Jonas Salk developed the first widely successful polio vaccine, an injectable vaccine that used inactivated poliovirus. His work turned a disease that regularly caused paralysis and death into one that could be dramatically controlled through immunization.

Salk led a research team at the University of Pittsburgh and tested whether chemically killed poliovirus could safely stimulate immunity. Large-scale trials in 1954 involved more than 1.8 million children, making them among the largest medical experiments of their time. The results were announced in 1955, and the vaccine soon entered mass production.

The question is sometimes complicated by the fact that Salk was not the only scientist to develop a polio vaccine. Albert Sabin later created an oral vaccine using weakened live poliovirus. Salk's vaccine, commonly called IPV, is injected; Sabin's OPV is taken by mouth. Both became major tools in the global fight against polio, but Jonas Salk is the standard answer when a quiz asks who developed the pioneering polio vaccine. Salk famously declined to patent it, saying the vaccine belonged to the people.