Jonas Salk when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered one of the most frightening public health problems in the world. In the postwar United States, annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 U.S. epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis, with most of its victims being children. The "public reaction was to a plague", said historian William L. O'Neill. "Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned." According to a 2009 PBS
Jonas Salk invited to work there." This was something that Salk was deprived of early in his life, but due to his achievements, was able to provide for future scientists. In 1966, Salk described his "ambitious plan for the creation of a kind of Socratic academy where the supposedly alienated two cultures of science and humanism will have a favorable atmosphere for cross-fertilization." Author and journalist Howard Taubman explained: "The New York Times", in a 1980 article celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Salk vaccine, described the current workings at the facility: At the institute, a magnificent complex of laboratories and study