Jonas Salk
A Life
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Narrated by:
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Pam Ward
About this listen
The authoritative account of one of the 20th century's most important - and controversial - scientists.
When a waiting world learned on April 12, 1955, that Jonas Salk had successfully created a vaccine to prevent poliomyelitis, he became a hero overnight. Born in a New York tenement, humble in manner, Salk had all the makings of a 20th-century icon - a knight in a white coat. In the wake of his achievement, he received a staggering number of awards and honors; for years his name ranked with Gandhi and Churchill on lists of the most revered people. And yet the one group whose adulation he craved - the scientific community - remained ominously silent. "The worst tragedy that could have befallen me was my success," Salk later said. "I knew right away that I was through - cast out."
In the first complete biography of Jonas Salk, Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs unravels Salk's story to reveal an unconventional scientist and a misunderstood and vulnerable man. Despite his incredible success in developing the polio vaccine, Salk was ostracized by his fellow scientists, who accused him of failing to give proper credit to other researchers and scorned his taste for media attention. Even before success catapulted him into the limelight, Salk was an inscrutable man disliked by many of his peers. Driven by an intense desire to aid mankind, he was initially oblivious and eventually resigned to the personal cost - as well as the costs suffered by his family and friends. And yet Salk remained, in the eyes of the public, an adored hero.
Based on hundreds of personal interviews and unprecedented access to Salk's sealed archives, Jacobs' biography offers the most complete picture of this figure. Salk's story has never been fully told; until now, his role in preventing polio has overshadowed his part in codeveloping the first influenza vaccine, his effort to meld the sciences and humanities in the magnificent Salk Institute, and his pioneering work on AIDS.
©2015 Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Great Book!!!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 05-21-08
By: Thomas Hager
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The Great Influenza
- The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease.
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Great book but very disturbing...
- By Tim on 01-15-09
By: John M. Barry
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Headstrong
- 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World
- By: Rachel Swaby
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In 2013, the New York Times published an obituary for Yvonne Brill. It began: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job, and took eight years off from work to raise three children.” It wasn’t until the second paragraph that readers discovered why the Times had devoted several hundred words to her life: Brill was a brilliant rocket scientist who invented a propulsion system to keep communications satellites in orbit, and had recently been awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
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Role models for young women
- By mtsuda90 on 06-25-16
By: Rachel Swaby
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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Loved every minute
- By Brian on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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The Secret History of the War on Cancer
- By: Devra Davis Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The War on Cancer was run by leaders of industries that made cancer-causing products and sometimes also profited from drugs and technologies for finding and treating the disease. Filled with compelling personalities and never-before-revealed information, The Secret History of the War on Cancer shows how we began fighting the wrong war, with the wrong weapons, against the wrong enemies, a legacy that persists to this day.
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Silly Book
- By Adam Smith on 12-24-14
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Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic
- By: Richard A. McKay
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaetan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed - and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak.
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A great revisionist history book
- By Maria José Celis on 05-04-23
By: Richard A. McKay
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Flu
- The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It
- By: Gina Kolata
- Narrated by: Gina Kolata
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
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Feeling feverish, tired, or achy? Listening to Gina Kolata's engrossing account of the 1918 Influenza epidemic is sure to give you the chills. A gripping work of science writing, Flu addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and considers what can be done to prevent it.
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overexcited
- By Marilyn on 07-23-03
By: Gina Kolata
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The Inheritance
- A Family on the Front Lines of the Battle Against Alzheimer's Disease
- By: Niki Kapsambelis
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Every 69 seconds, someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Of the top 10 killers, it is the only disease for which there is no cure or treatment. For most people, there is nothing that they can do to fight back. But one family is doing all they can. The DeMoe family has the most devastating form of the disease that there is: early onset Alzheimer's, an inherited genetic mutation that causes the disease in 100 percent of cases, and has a 50 percent chance of being passed onto the next generation.
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A Cover-to-Cover Slug in the Gut, but Inspiring
- By Gillian on 04-16-17
By: Niki Kapsambelis
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Epic Measures
- One Doctor. Seven Billion Patients.
- By: Jeremy N. Smith
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Moneyball meets medicine in this remarkable chronicle of one of the greatest scientific quests of our time - the groundbreaking program to answer the most essential question for humanity: How do we live and die? - and the visionary mastermind behind it.
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Fabulously insightful read!
- By Dr. Jack E. Fincham on 10-08-15
By: Jeremy N. Smith
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Rosalind Franklin
- A Life from Beginning to End (Biographies of Women in History)
- By: Hourly History
- Narrated by: Matthew J. Chandler-Smith
- Length: 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosalind Franklin was what can only be called an overlooked genius. Although she was not fully credited for the feat at the time, her work led to major breakthroughs in our understanding of DNA. In fact, she took the first X-ray photo of DNA in all of its double helix glory. By the time her former colleagues were being showered with accolades for results they made at least partially based on her findings, Franklin would not be around to see it. Sadly, it’s believed that her use of X-ray equipment gave her terminal cancer, cutting her life short at age 37.
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Covers the facts
- By Freda St on 08-21-24
By: Hourly History
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US of AA
- How the Twelve Steps Hijacked the Science of Alcoholism
- By: Joe Miller
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Five years in the making, this brilliant, in-depth investigative reporting on the history, politics, and science of alcoholism will show how AA became our nation's de facto treatment policy, even as evidence for more effective remedies accumulated. US of AA is a character-driven, beautifully written exposé, full of secrecy, irony, liquor industry money, the shrillest of scare tactics and, at its center, a grand deception. US of AA shines a much-needed spotlight on the addiction treatment industry. It will forever change the way we think about the entire enterprise.
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A Detailed History of Alcoholism
- By Tricia O. on 04-03-19
By: Joe Miller
What listeners say about Jonas Salk
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- David Tunstall
- 10-05-20
surprising at every turn
I had a preconceived notion of who Dr Salk was but this book has thoroughly filled in the blanks and I may even have to go through it again to complete the picture. well done.
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- Jean
- 10-24-15
Insightful
This is the first full account of Jonas Salk’s (1914-1995) life ever published. The author is Charlotte Jacobs, M.D. a professor of medicine (Emeritus) at Sanford University. Later in life she studied biography writing; this is her second biography she has published. I recently read “American Biography,” by Carl Rollyson so I paid closer attention to the details required to make a great biography while reading this book. I felt Jacobs followed the requirements when she researched and wrote the book on Salk. This is an excellent biography of Jonas Salk the man.
The book is well written, the writing style is engaging and informative. The writing did not appear to be heavily academic. Jacobs wrote a sympathetic narrative but did reveal the strengths and weakness of Jonas Salk from his extreme shyness to his idealism. Dr. Jacobs had unprecedented access to Salk’s sealed archives and she conducted hundreds of personal interviews. The research appeared to be meticulous. The author does a good job revealing how the scientific community treated Salk and also how Salk was affected by anti-Semitism early in his life. Salk attended New York University School of Medicine at it did not discriminate against Jews as all the Ivy League school did. Salk’s parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland.
On 12 April 2015 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the announcement that Jonas Salk’s vaccine could prevent poliomyelitis. I remember the excitement of polio being conquered; I also remember lining up at school to get the vaccine. Salk was a professor of medicine at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and later developed the Salk Institute. Salk did not patent the Polio vaccine and received no monies from it. Besides his work on polio Salk did pioneering work on multiple sclerosis and AIDS; he was also the co-developer of the first influenza vaccine with Thomas Francis M.D. The Salk vaccine is still used today along with the Sabin vaccine, together they are more effective against polio.
I was amazed to discover that Jonas Salk did not receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the vaccine for Polio. I remember my mother’s fear every summer and all the precautions she took to keep my sister and I safe from polio. The discovery was truly one of the greatness in the 20th century. Pam Ward did a good job narrating the biography. This is a fairly long book at about 20 hours. I am looking forward to reading more books by Charlotte Jacobs.
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