Jonas Salk
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salkwas an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful polio vaccine. Born in New York City, he attended New York University School of Medicine, later choosing to do medical research instead of becoming a practicing physician. In 1939, after earning his medical degree, Salk began an internship as a scientist physician at Mount Sinai Hospital. Two years later he was granted a fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he would study flu...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth28 October 1914
CountryUnited States of America
The art of science is as important as so-called technical science. You need both. It's this combination that must be recognized and acknowledged and valued.
My life is pretty well at peace, and the profession is more of an avocation. It's a calling, if you like, rather than a job. I do what I feel impelled to do, as an artist would.
What you see in living systems, and in genetic systems, is that the genes are already there, having arisen in the course of time, and when they are needed they become activated. If they had to be invented, the time would be too late.
I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.
One of the greatest rewards for doing can be the chances it gives to do some more - even better.
I have the impression that the new generation of young people, are coming up on the scene with a sense "ancestorhood", and with more wisdom than was evident before.
My job is to help people see what I see. If it's of value, fine. And, if it's not of value, then at least I've done what I can do.
When I worked on the polio vaccine, I had a theory. I guided each [experiment] by imagining myself in the phenomenon in which I was interested. The intuitive realm . . . the realm of the imagination guides my thinking.
A wisdom deficit - fewer elders and even fewer people who listen to them.
Solutions come through evolution. They come through asking the right questions, because the answers pre-exist. It is the questions that we must define and discover. You don't invent the answer-you reveal the answer.
I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience.
Evolution favors the survival of the wisest.
You can have a team of unconventional thinkers, as well as conventional thinkers. If you don't have the support of others you cannot achieve anything altogether on your own. It's like a cry in the wilderness. In each instance there were others who could see the same thing, and there were others who could not. It's an obvious difference we see in those who you might say have a bird's eye view, and those who have a worm's eye view. I've come to realize that we all have a different mind set, we all see things differently, and that's what the human condition is really all about.
When things get bad enough, then something happens to correct the course. And it's for that reason that I speak about evolution as an error-making and an error-correcting process. And if we can be ever so much better - ever so much slightly better - at error correcting than at error making, then we'll make it.