Leona Baumgartner as the cornerstone to the creation of a healthy community, beginning with her work as district health officer in planning classes and clinics. Baumgartner was also an early advocate of the vaccine developed by Jonas Salk as a method of immunization against polio and the fluoridation of water as a bulwark against dental disease. Baumgartner was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1969. She was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1977. Her other awards include the Sedgwick Medal, the Albert Lasker Public Service Award, the Elizabeth Blackwell
Jonas Salk their parents. ... From these ranks, of the 1930s and 1940s, emerged a wealth of intellectual talent, including more Nobel Prize winners—eight—and PhD recipients than any other public college except the University of California at Berkeley." Salk entered CCNY at the age of 15, a "common age for a freshman who had skipped multiple grades along the way." As a child, Salk did not show any interest in medicine or science in general. He said in an interview with the Academy of Achievement, "As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in things human, the