Franklin A. Neva followed by service with the US Navy at Naval Medical Research Unit-3 in Cairo, Egypt. He spent several years at Harvard University as a researcher. He became a professor at University of Pittsburgh, where he worked with Jonas Salk on a vaccine for polio. While at Pittsburgh, he also isolated ECHO 16, the virus responsible for Boston exanthem disease. This was the first description of that disease. Together with Thomas Weller, he isolated the Rubella virus in 1962. In 1964 he moved back to Harvard to head the Department of Tropical Public Health. In 1969 he joined the National Institutes
Jonas Salk of my first year of medical school, I received an opportunity to spend a year in research and teaching in biochemistry, which I did. And at the end of that year, I was told that I could, if I wished, switch and get a Ph.D. in biochemistry, but my preference was to stay with medicine. And, I believe that this is all linked to my original ambition, or desire, which was to be of some help to humankind, so to speak, in a larger sense than just on a one-to-one basis." Concerning his last year of medical school Salk says: