Thomas Weller

Thomas Huckle Weller was an American virologist who, together with John Franklin Enders and Frederick Chapman Robbins, demonstrated how to cultivate poliomyelitis viruses in a test tube using a combination of human embryonic skin and muscle tissue. This breakthrough in tissue culture technique made it possible to grow and study the poliovirus outside a living host, a step that proved essential to later polio vaccine development. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery.