On this day 100 years ago, a boy was born in New York City to two uneducated Jewish immigrants. He was a clever kid, and wanted to be a lawyer, but his mother steered him towards medicine. He entered college at 15, and did indeed get into medical school, but unlike his classmates, he didn’t want to actually practice medicine. Jonas Salk wanted to be a research scientist instead.

By the time he had embarked on his research career, the US President Franklin D Roosevelt had a bee in his bonnet. A polio epidemic had been sweeping the nation during the preceding years, and enough was enough. Roosevelt launched a massive national campaign to find a way to stamp out the crippling and often lethal disease. 

Roosevelt set up the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (polio) in 1938, declaring the Foundation’s goal to be to "lead, direct and unify the fight on every phase of this sickness”. Roosevelt himself had contracted polio in 1921, and had been paralysed from the waist down. However, it was not until popular performer Eddie Cantor became involved that fundraising activities really took off. It was Cantor who first called the campaign the ‘March of Dimes’, the term being a play on the name of the popular March of Time newsreels during that era.

The result of the campaign was staggering. Within the first week after the radio appeal, ordinary Americans had mailed 268,000 dimes to the White House. By the end of the first campaign, the March of Dimes had successfully raised US$1.8 million, rising to $67 million by 1955.

The proceeds fuelled intense competition among medical scientists. Jonas Salk had previously been working on an army-commissioned project to develop a vaccine for influenza, but then accepted an invitation to switch his focus to a vaccine for polio.

In 1956, Wisdom magazine ran a cover story about Salk, summarising some of the reasoning behind his desire to do research: "There are two types of medical specialists. There are those who fight disease day and night, who assist mankind in times of despair and agony and who preside over the awesome events of life and death. Others work in the quiet detachment of the laboratory; their names are often unknown to the general public, but their research may have momentous consequences."

Yep, the reason why more people than Salk’s family and friends are celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth is because he nailed it; he created the world’s first effective vaccine for polio in 1955.

The official announcement that the vaccine worked was a very big deal. Church bells were ringing across the country, factories were observing moments of silence, synagogues and churches were holding prayer meetings, and parents and teachers were weeping. One shopkeeper painted a sign on his window: Thank you, Dr. Salk. 'It was as if a war had ended', one observer recalled.

When asked who owned the patent for the vaccine, Salk famously replied “The people, I would say. There is no patent... could you patent the sun?”

Salk’s discovery was followed by the development of the oral polio vaccine by Albert Sabin in 1962. The introduction of these vaccines halted the epidemic of polio in the United States, and they are still used today, in improved form, to protect children all over the world from this debilitating disease.

The March of Dimes campaign proved what was possible when ordinary citizens get behind a cause. By coming together to fight polio in their own country, Americans created the vaccines that could wipe out polio from the entire globe.

Today, the fight continues to reach the most impoverished and isolated kids in the world against polio. With 99% of the disease wiped out, it remains endemic in only Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. We’re so close.

Thanks to Jonas Salk, we have the vaccine. Now we just need the willpower and funding to finish the job.