Answer:
Jonas Salk became well known in the early 1950s because he developed a vaccine that virtually eliminated polio from American society.
Explanation:
Jonas Salk was an American physiologist who developed the first polio vaccine.
In 1942 he was awarded a scholarship for the study of a vaccine against influenza that allowed him to collaborate with his former professor and prestigious virologist Thomas Francis, then at the University of Michigan. In 1947, as director of the laboratory for viral research at the University of Pittsburgh, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis proposed him to join the different teams that were looking for a remedy for polio. In 1952 he obtained a first result in the form of a trivalent vaccine, for which he used dead viruses by application of formalin.
After testing it with animals and a small population of children who had already developed polio, the good results obtained encouraged the Foundation to finance an extensive test campaign that aroused great public expectation. In 1955 he announced that his vaccine had been successfully tested and immediately became a celebrity, to the point of having to address the nation, at the behest of President Eisenhower, in a televised message.
