Max Theiler America. Between 1940 and 1947, the Rockefeller Foundation produced more than 28 million doses of the vaccine and finally ended yellow fever as a major disease. For this work, Theiler received the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Theiler also was awarded the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene's Chalmers Medal in 1939, Harvard University's Flattery Medal in 1945, and the American Public Health Association's Lasker Award in 1949. In 1937, Max Theiler discovered a filterable agent that was a known cause for paralysis in mice. He found the virus was not transmittable to rhesus macaques, and that
Yellow fever vaccine neurologic complications in a few cases. Attempts to attenuate the virus used in the vaccine failed. Scientists at the Rockefeller Foundation developed another vaccine derived from the serum of an African named Asibi in 1927, the first isolation of the virus from a human. It was safer but involved the use of large amounts of human serum, which limited widespread use. Both vaccines were in use for several years, the Rockefeller vaccine in the Western hemisphere and England, and the Pasteur Institute vaccine in France and its African colonies. In 1937, Max Theiler, working with Hugh Smith at the Rockefeller