We Need Your Help!
Do You Know This Scientist?
If you do, we welcome your input. Please share your funny stories, brief anecdotes, quotes, and photos of the scientist - as well as your own inspirational opinions. Personal accounts help bring a scientist alive and create an enduring historical picture. You can be a part of this exciting history by providing your personal account!
Please click here to learn more about how to contribute:
Participate as a Friend Scholar
Can You Write or Research?
Help us learn more about this great scientist. You can be a credited Support Scholar by contributing your knowledge about this scientist and important discovery. Entries can be as short as a single section and as easy as compiling quotes. Click here to learn more about becoming a Support Scholar:
Participate as a Support Scholar
Would you like to adopt a scientist?
Endeavor to research all the sections of a scientist. Click here to learn how to be an Expert Scholar.
Participate as an Expert Scholar
Have Historically Significant Photographs?
Participate with Photos
Click here for all the ways you can participate:
Participate to ScienceHeroes.com
Testimonials
Has this scientist’s science impacted your life?
Click here to tell your story or to read others’ life changing anecdotes:
Post Your Own Testimonial
|
David Smith (1932 - ) Born in the United States Year of Discovery: 1969 
Doctor on Team that Makes Hib Disease Rates Tumble Smith, growing up in Canton, Ohio, was introduced to science at a young age. His father was a science teacher and his mother a mathematics tutor. Smith, doing only what seemed natural, followed in his parents' footsteps and pursued a career in medicine. During medical school he participated in a "year-out" program, during which he worked fulltime in the laboratory of a microbiologist. It was this early work studying the effect of viruses that shaped the remainder of his career. In 1968, Smith began a years-long pursuit to develop a vaccine against Haemophilus Influenzae type b (Hib), the leading cause of bacterial meningitis. Over the next 15 years Smith, along with colleague Porter Anderson, worked to perfect the vaccine. Finding no pharmaceutical company interested in buying the rights to his vaccine, Smith started his own small company to produce the vaccine. The incidence of Hib disease in the United States has been reduced by 99 percent since the introduction of Smith's Hib vaccine. Smith was both brilliant and persistent. When he and other young doctors made their Harvard rounds one day, they were challenged by Smith's mentor, Charles Janeway. They stood at the bedside of a young boy suffering from meningitis. Janeway told the group, "One of you should try to find a vaccine to prevent this terrible disease." That set things in motion, and Smith was off on a 15-year journey of discovery. Smith's work built on earlier discoveries that many bacteria have a protective coat made up of chains of sugar molecules known as polysaccharides. It's these protective coats the immune system attacks. Early results with lab animals, however, were unsatisfactory. So Smith and Anderson did what many great scientists have done - they became the first human test subjects of their own vaccine. This worked. The pair developed antibodies to Hib and this laid the groundwork for future trials. The first large-scale trial took place in Finland in 1975, and involved 100,000 children. The results were promising, but not perfect. Children older than 18 months received immunity, but those under 18 months did not. This led Smith to develop a second vaccine specifically for use in young infants. Smith and his fellow researcher, Anderson, developed a "conjugate" vaccine to fight against Hib in these infants. A conjugate vaccine joins two different substances - in this case, the polysaccharides from the Hib bacteria with a protein from a second bacteria. It was this introduction of the larger protein that allowed the immune systems of the young infants to recognize the bacteria and to produce antibodies against Hib. The first vaccine, for older children and adults, was approved for use in 1987. The second, for use with younger infants, was approved in 1990. Smith's persistence over the years has paid tremendous dividends, saving tens of thousands of young lives and preventing lifelong disability for many more. Smith was also a passionate conservationist. He was instrumental in the founding of the Polly Hill Arboretum, a 60-acre botanical sanctuary on Martha's Vineyard. He also found a way to combine his passion for science and his love of nature, by donating $9 million to the Nature Conservancy. This generosity allowed 48 postdoctoral researchers to dedicate themselves to the study of freshwater conservation. Introduction by Tim Anderson
Table of Contents IntroductionLinks to More Information About the Scientist Key Insight Key Experiment or Research Key Contributors Quotes by the Scientist Quotes About the Scientist Anecdotes Fun Trivia About The Science The Science Behind the Discovery Personal Information Science Discovery Timeline Recommended Books About the Science Books by the Scientist Books About the Scientist Awards Major Academic Papers Curriculum Vitae Links to Science and Related Information on the Subject Sources
Links to More About the Scientist & the Science University of Rochester Medical Center profile: http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/cvbi/history.cfm Society for Conservation Biology biography: http://www.conbio.org/smithfellows/about/smith/ The New York Times obituary: Sliders & Images here Image Flow Here
Key Contributors
The Science Behind the Discovery
Curriculum VitaeLinks to Information on the Science Sources/References
|
