Confronting a Pandemic, 1957

Microbiologist Maurice Hilleman foresaw the global spread of a novel influenza strain in 1957. His vaccine saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Written byCatherine Offord

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ABOVE: The old Walter Reed Army Institute of Research building
DOD PHOTO BY SAMANTHA L. QUIGLEY

The first cases were reported in Guizhou province in southwestern China in 1956. By February 1957, the disease, a form of influenza that caused typical flu symptoms such as a sore throat and fever, had arrived in Singapore. Weeks later, it hit Hong Kong.

Maurice Hilleman, a microbiologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland, read about the outbreaks in The New York Times on April 17 of that year. An article entitled “Hong Kong Battling Influenza Epidemic” stated that 250,000 people there were receiving treatment for the infection. Lines of people, including “many women” carrying “glassy-eyed children,” were forming outside health clinics, the article noted. “I said, ‘My God, this is the pandemic. It’s here,’ ” Hilleman recalled in an interview decades later.

Scanpix, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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