1872-1961

French veterinarian who developed bacillus Calmette-Guérin, or BCG, in association with Albert Calmette at the Pasteur Institute in Lille. BCG was widely used as a vaccine to prevent childhood tuberculosis. Guérin and Calmette spent 13 years developing a weak strain of bovine tuberculosis bacteria. In the 1920s, convinced that BCG was harmless to humans but could induce immunity to the tubercle bacillus, they began a series of experimental inoculations of newborn infants at the Charité Hospital in Paris.