John
Franklin Enders was born on February 10th, 1897, at West Hartford, Connecticut,
U.S.A. He is the son of John Ostrom Enders, a banker in Hartford, and Harriet
Goulden Enders (née Whitmore).
Enders was educated at the Noah Webster School at Hartford and St. Paul's School
in Concord, New Hampshire. Finishing school in 1915, he went to Yale University,
but in 1917 left his studies there to become, in 1918, a pilot in the U.S. Air
Force with the rank of Ensign. After the First World War he returned to Yale
and was given, in 1919, the degree of B.A. (honoris causa) and the normal
degree in 1920.
He then went into business in real estate in Hartford, but, becoming dissatisfied
with this, he entered Harvard University. For four years he studied English
literature and Germanic and Celtic languages with the idea of becoming a teacher
of English, but he was not satisfied with this career either. He had been for
a long time interested in biology and this interest was reawakened by his friendships
with medical students at Harvard, with the result that he decided to enter as
a candidate for the Ph.D. degree in bacteriology and immunology. In coming to
this decision he was influenced by the late Professor Hans Zinsser, who was
then Head of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at Harvard and by
Dr. H. K. Ward, who later became Professor of Bacteriology at the University
of Sidney, Australia.
In 1930, Enders received the degree of Ph.D. at Harvard for a thesis which presented
evidence that bacterial anaphylaxis and hypersensitivity of the tuberculin type
are distinct phenomena.
From 1930 until 1946, Enders remained at Harvard as a member of the teaching
staff. During this period he studied, first, the elucidation of certain factors
related to bacterial virulence and the resistance of the host organism. He then
clarified, in collaboration with Ward,
Shaffer, Wu, and others the inhibitory
effect of the type specific capsular polysaccharides of Pneumococcus
upon the phagocytic process. This work discovered a new form of Type I polysaccharide
and produced evidence animals gay John sexy - F. Enders that complement played movie Enders John - forced F. sex a John pic F. brutal - Enders Enders - John Электродвигатель АИР F. Подиумы универсальные GetZ Logan Accent Renault John F. Hyundai - Enders catalytic-like in John Enders girls - F. stockings part in gay F. - Enders John sexy animals the opsonization
of bacteria by specific antibody.
In 1938, Enders began the study of some of the mammalian viruses, and undertook,
in 1941, in collaboration with Cohen, Kane, Levens, Stokes and others, a study
of the virus of mumps. This work provided serological tests for the diagnosis
of this disease and a skin test for susceptibility to it, and demonstrated the
immunizing effect of inactivated mumps virus and the possibility of attenuating
the virulence of this virus by passing it through chick embryos. It was shown
that mumps often occurs in a form that is not apparent, but nevertheless confers
a resistance which is as effective as that
conferred by the visible disease.
In 1946, Enders was asked to establish a laboratory for research in infectious
diseases at the Children's Medical Center at Boston. In this laboratory much
outstanding work on the viral diseases of man has been done under his direction
and it was here that the work was done on the cultivation of the poliomyelitis
viruses for which Enders was awarded, together with T. H. Weller and F. C. Robbins,
the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1954.
Since this time Enders has returned, in collaboration with Peebles, to his earlier
work on measles. He is now Higgins University Professor at Harvard University
and Chief of the Research Division of Infectious Diseases of the Children's
Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Enders is a member of a great number of American learned societies, the Society
for General Microbiology and the Royal Society
for the Promotion of Health in
Great Britain, the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher (Leopoldina), and is
Foreign Corresponding Member of the British Medical Association and the Académie
Royale de Médicine de Belgique.
He married Sarah Frances Bennett, of Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1927. She
died in 1943, and in 1951 Enders married Carolyn B. Keane of Newton Center,
Massachusetts. He has one son John Ostrom Enders II, one daughter, Sarah Enders,
and a stepson, William Edmund Keane.
From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1942-1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
 
John F. Enders died on September 8, 1985.
 
|