Dr. Younger, right, with Jonas Salk
 
Dr. Julius Younger was the last surviving member of the team which developed the first successful polio vaccine
 
 
 
 
Most people of a certain age, especially Rotarians, recognize the name, Dr. Jonas Salk as the person who is credited with developing the injectible polio vaccine in 1955. But there were several other members of that team at the University of Pittsburgh, including Dr. Julius Younger who died April 27 at age 96 in Pittsburgh. He was 34 at the time the vaccine as approved by the Centers for Disease Control after massive tests with over 440,000 children in 44 states.
 
Younger’s most significant contributions to the team effort were developing a method using monkey kidneys to create large quantities of the polio virus for experiments and development of the vaccine; and finding a way to deactivate the virus without disrupting its abilities to produce antibodies, according to an article in the May 7 New York Times.