Jonas Salk

Jonas Salk is one of the most famous and revered figures of the twentieth century. He was the developer of the first effective vaccine to prevent polio. Almost overnight, he became internationally famous—a hero to an appreciative public. His legacy survives to this day, and his name and image are instantly recognizable to many. In the last decades of his life, Salk devoted considerable attention to the development of an evolutionary philosophy that would be the basis for solving some of the most basic problems of humankind. He was the author of four books, including World Population and Human Values: A New Reality, written in 1981 with his son Jonathan. A New Reality is an update, revision and redesign of that title.