Dr. Thomas H. Weller, 93; shared Nobel Prize for polio research
Dr. Thomas H. Weller, who shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research on the polio virus, died in his sleep Saturday at his home in Needham. He was 93.
"It's clear that he was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century," said Dr. Dyann Wirth, the Richard Pearson Strong professor of infectious diseases and chairwoman of the department of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. "He really exemplified what we think of as the best in science - that is, a real curiosity for science and for discovery, a dedication to training the next generation, and a real vision of how to solve some of the biggest public health problems."
Dr. Weller won the Nobel Prize along with two Children's Hospital Boston colleagues, John F. Enders and Frederick C. Robbins. In 1949, they discovered a way to grow the polio virus in safe tissue cultures, a discovery that led to the development of the Salk and Sabin vaccines against the disease. It also underlay the development of vaccines for other viral diseases such as measles and chicken pox and has proved to be a crucial aid to cancer research.
In a 2003 New York Times interview, Dr. George Miller, a Yale virologist, described the breakthrough by Dr. Weller and his colleagues as "one of the major discoveries in virology, cell biology, and molecular biology in the 20th century."
Some 600,000 Americans suffered from polio in the 20th century. At its height, in 1952, about 58,000 cases were reported. Polio's emotional impact was vastly disproportionate to the number of victims, however. The fact that it commonly struck children, could have such devastating effects (including death and paralysis), and its epidemiological unpredictability made it deeply feared.
"His early training was as a pediatrician at Children's Hospital," Dr. Peter F. Weller of Wellesley said of his father. "Polio was a major scourge. When you looked at the wards that were filled with individuals in iron lungs, there was tremendous impetus for research."
Dr. Thomas Weller's work was not restricted to polio. He also isolated and for the first time grew the viruses that cause chicken pox and shingles, in 1955. In 1963, he and three other researchers discovered the virus that causes German measles.
He was also a notable figure in the world of tropical medicine. From 1953 to 1959, Dr. Weller was director of the Commission on Parasitic Diseases of the American Armed Forces Epidemiological Board. He headed the department of tropical public health at Harvard from 1954 to 1981. He was a past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and was awarded the organization's Walter Reed Medal in 1996.
At the time of his death, Dr. Weller was the Richard Pearson Strong professor of tropical medicine emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Thomas Huckle Weller was born in Ann
A devoted birdwatcher, Dr. Weller showed an interest in science from an early age. He published his first scientific paper, on blue jays, when he was a college junior. He received bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Michigan and a medical degree at Harvard, in 1940. The year before, he started working in Enders's research laboratory.
Dr. Weller began his clinical training at Children's Hospital in Boston, but interrupted it to enlist in the Army Medical Corps. Stationed in Puerto Rico, he rose to the rank of major.
When he was an intern at Children's Hospital, Dr. Weller met Kathleen R. Fahey, who was working in a laboratory there. They married in 1945.
Two years later, Dr. Weller joined Enders in organizing the research division of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital. Robbins, a medical school classmate, joined Dr. Weller and Enders in 1948.
The following year, Dr. Weller and his colleagues grew the poliomyelitis virus for the first time outside human or monkey nerve cells. Using a combination of human embryonic skin and muscle tissue, they demonstrated that polio originates in the body outside the nervous system and that paralysis develops only when the disease has spread to the brain and spinal cells. It had been believed that the polio virus fed on nerve tissue, not muscle tissue.
Before this work by Dr. Weller and his colleagues, researchers had been restricted to studying the polio virus in eggs, mice, monkeys, and other animals. Their work greatly facilitated the study of the virus. Within a few years, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin developed their vaccines for the disease.
In 1954, the year Dr. Weller, Enders, and Robbins won the Nobel Prize, there were 28,000 cases of polio in the United States. Less than a decade later, that number was 121.
Asked his response to news of the award, Dr. Enders said, "I am so happy that the three of us who have worked together have shared this honor. It is particularly gratifying that the team which originally worked on the problem should be rewarded together. In a way, it is symbolic, because no discovery in the scientific world is due to the efforts of any one man, but always results from the work of many people."
Dr. Weller's renown as a scientific researcher did not lead him to ignore more mundane concerns of medical practice. Addressing Harvard Medical School's 1963 commencement, he noted that medical education "tends to ignore the most practical challenge presented by man as a social entity." There's more to medicine, he declared, than "dollar investment in men and machines."
Despite his spectacular success as a researcher, Dr. Weller emphasized the importance of public health in medical science.
"It is more important to keep a country well and free from epidemics and to see that mothers with small children in homes where money is scarce don't 'come down with something' in the winter than it is to hold up the goal of eliminating death," he said in a 1966 Globe interview.
"In this country tremendous efforts are being applied to prolonging life expectancy beyond 70 years. The gains we make are measured in terms of months," he also said in that interview. "If we applied our available knowledge to the tropical areas where the life expectancy is more like 35 years, we could add decades to the expectancy in those countries."
In 2004, he published his autobiography, "Growing Pathogens in Tissue Cultures: Fifty Years in Academic Tropical Medicine, Pediatrics, and Virology."
Dr. Weller's work "really inspired generations of scientists to follow in his footsteps in combating the major diseases," Wirth said, adding that even in the last years of his career at Harvard "he remained a remarkable person. His interest in science, his keen mind, his interest in the latest scientific developments was really remarkable. Students found him to be an amazing inspiration."
In addition to his wife, Kathleen, of Needham, and his son Peter, Dr. Weller leaves another son, Robert of Bourne; a daughter, Janet of Washington, D.C.; three grandsons; and three granddaughters.
Services will be private. 