Paul Parkman isolated the rubella (German measles) virus and, with Harry Martin Meyer (1928-2001), co-discovered the first widely applicable test for rubella antibodies and the vaccine against rubella.

Born in Auburn, New York, on May 29, 1932, the son of Stuart Douglas Parkman, a postal clerk, and his wife Mary née Klumpp, a homemaker, Parkman graduated from Weedsport, New York, High School in 1950. His father also served on the Weedsport Central School Board of Education and raised turkeys and chickens to help finance his son's education. Parkman took advantage of a special three-year premedical program at St. Lawrence University, majored in biology, and received both his M.D. from the State University of New York Upstate Medical Center College of Medicine (now Upstate Medical University) and his B.S. from St. Lawrence together in 1957.

After his internship at Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, Cooperstown, New York, from 1957 to 1958, and...