Who gave the first successful smallpox vaccination in 1796?

Edward Jenner gave the first successful smallpox vaccination in 1796. Jenner, an English physician, noticed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox seemed protected from smallpox, a far more dangerous disease. He tested this idea by inoculating James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy, with material from a cowpox sore.

Jenner later exposed Phipps to smallpox material, and the boy did not develop smallpox. Although the experiment would not meet modern ethical standards, it provided influential evidence that exposure to a related, milder infection could prevent a deadly disease. Jenner called the procedure vaccination, from vacca, the Latin word for cow.

Smallpox vaccination was not the first attempt to prevent smallpox: variolation had been used earlier, but it deliberately exposed people to smallpox and carried serious risks. Jenner’s cowpox-based method was safer and became the foundation of modern vaccination. The World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated in 1980.