Thomas H. Weller. (The Library of Congress. Reproduced with permission.)

1915-

American Physician, Virologist, and Bacteriologist

Thomas Huckle Weller is an American virologist and bacteriologist who, along with Drs. John Franklin Enders (1897-1985) and Fredrick C. Robbins (1916- ), was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1954 for the discovery that the polio-causing virus could be cultivated in a test tube. This was the breakthrough required in order to mass-produce a polio vaccine.

Weller was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on June 15, 1915. His father, Carl V. Weller, was a pathologist and chairman of the department of pathology at the University of Michigan Medical School. Weller attended the University of Michigan, obtaining both his bachelor's and master's degrees there. He followed his father's footsteps into medicine by attending Harvard Medical School. In his senior year, he had the opportunity to work with Dr. John...