Isabel Morgan
Encyclopedia
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
,
who – in a research team with David Bodian
David Bodian
David Bodian , was an American medical scientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who worked in polio research . In the early 1940s he helped lay the groundwork for the eventual development of polio vaccines by combining neurological research with the study of the pathogenesis of...
and Howard Howe – prepared an experimental vaccine that protected monkeys against poliomyelitis
Poliomyelitis
Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the fecal-oral route...
. She was the daughter of Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and embryologist and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries relating the role the chromosome plays in heredity.Morgan received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in zoology...
and Lilian Vaughan Sampson
Lilian Vaughn Morgan
Lilian Vaughn Morgan was an American geneticist and the wife of Thomas Hunt Morgan. Ms. Morgan published 16 single author papers in her lifetime. Her major discoveries include the attached X chromosome in fruit flies. She was one of the founders of the Children's School of Science in Woods Hole,...
.
Academic career and research work on polio
Isabel Morgan graduated from Stanford UniversityStanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
and wrote her doctoral thesis in bacteriology
Bacteriology
Bacteriology is the study of bacteria. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classification, and characterization of bacterial species...
at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
. She joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research
Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a private university offering postgraduate and postdoctoral education. It has a strong concentration in the biological sciences. It is also known for producing numerous Nobel laureates...
in New York in 1938.
There she worked in Peter Olitsky’s lab and did research work on immunity to viral
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
diseases, e. g. polio and encephalomyelitis
Encephalomyelitis
Encephalomyelitis is a general term for inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, describing a number of disorders:* Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis or postinfectious encephalomyelitis, a demyelinating disease of the brain and spinal cord, possibly triggered by vaccination or viral...
.
In 1944 Morgan - induced by David Bodian
David Bodian
David Bodian , was an American medical scientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who worked in polio research . In the early 1940s he helped lay the groundwork for the eventual development of polio vaccines by combining neurological research with the study of the pathogenesis of...
- joined a group of virologists at Johns Hopkins and began experiments to immunize monkeys against polio with killed viruses. She grew poliovirus in nervous tissue
Nervous tissue
Nervous tissue is one of four major classes of vertebrate tissue.Nervous tissue is the main component of the nervous system - the brain, spinal cord, and nerves-which regulates and controls body functions...
and inactivated it with formaldehyde
Formaldehyde
Formaldehyde is an organic compound with the formula CH2O. It is the simplest aldehyde, hence its systematic name methanal.Formaldehyde is a colorless gas with a characteristic pungent odor. It is an important precursor to many other chemical compounds, especially for polymers...
. After vaccination with the inactivated virus the monkeys were able to resist injections with high concentrations of live poliovirus.
Morgan's work was a key link in the chain of progress toward a killed-virus polio vaccine, one that culminated in the approval of Jonas Salk
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine. He was born in New York City to parents from Ashkenazi Jewish Russian immigrant families...
's vaccine for general use in 1955. Until Morgan did her work, no-one knew that anything short of a live virus could convey immunity to polio. Morgan's polio research only lasted from 1944 and 1949, which makes it remarkable that she made an effect in such a short time. Oshinsky points out her reluctance to take the logical next step, which was vaccine testing in humans.
In January 1958 she was inducted - as the only woman among 16 men - into the Polio Hall of Fame
Polio Hall of Fame
The Polio Hall of Fame consists of a linear grouping of sculptured busts of fifteen scientists and two laymen who made important contributions to the knowledge and treatment of poliomyelitis...
at Warm Springs, Georgia
Warm Springs, Georgia
Warm Springs is a city in Meriwether County, Georgia, United States. The population was 478 at the 2010 census.-History:Warm Springs first came to prominence in the 19th century as a spa town, due to its mineral springs which flow constantly at nearly 32 °C...
.
Work in Westchester department and at the Sloan-Kettering Institute
In 1949 Isabel Morgan left Johns Hopkins and married former Air Force Colonel Joseph Mountain, who was a data processor in New York. The couple moved to Westchester County and Morgan took a job with the county's Department of Laboratory Research.After her marriage Isabel Morgan never returned to polio research.She did, however, publish articles on polio. When her stepson Jimmy Mountain was killed in an air crash in 1960 she gave up her job at the County Department and got a master's degree in biostatistics
Biostatistics
Biostatistics is the application of statistics to a wide range of topics in biology...
from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. She went on to work as a consultant at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center is a cancer treatment and research institution founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital...
in Manhattan.
Isabel Morgan died in 1996 at the age of 85.
Further reading
- David OshinskyDavid OshinskyDavid M. Oshinsky is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian; he currently holds the Jack S. Blanton chair in history at the University of Texas at Austin and is a distinguished scholar in residence at New York University....
: Polio: An American Story. Oxford University Press, 2005 ISBN 0195152948.
External links
Publications by Isabel Morgan (retrieved from Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe and America's largest...
) in