Max Theiler Max Theiler Max Theiler (30 January 1899 – 11 August 1972) was a South African-American virologist and physician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1951 for developing a vaccine against yellow fever in 1937, becoming the first African-born Nobel laureate. Born in Pretoria, Theiler was educated in South Africa through completion of his degree in medical school. He went to London for postgraduate work at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, King's College London, and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, earning a 1922 diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene. That year, he
Arnold Theiler sickness with a combination of live virus and equine antiserum. This disease is now known to be caused by a pegivirus. Theiler was the first Director of the Onderstepoort Veterinary Research Institute, outside Pretoria. This institute under his leadership carried out research on African horse sickness, sleeping sickness, malaria, East Coast fever ("Theileria parva") and tick-borne diseases such as redwater, heartwater and biliary. The University of Pretoria Faculty of Veterinary Science was established there in 1920 which enabled veterinarians to train locally for the first time. Theiler became the first dean of this faculty. He married Emma Sophie Jegge (1861–1951)