Max Theiler

Born in Pretoria in 1899, Theiler studied medicine in South Africa before moving to London for postgraduate work, earning a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene in 1922. That same year he crossed to the United States to join the Harvard School of Tropical Medicine, never to return home. In 1930 he shifted to the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, eventually becoming director of the Virus Laboratory. There, in 1937, he cracked yellow fever — a vaccine that worked, that lasted, that could be mass-produced. The Nobel followed in 1951. He spent the rest of his life in the country that had giv…