Richard Shope

Richard Edwin Shope was an American virologist who, together with his mentor Paul A. Lewis at the Rockefeller Institute, identified influenzavirus A in pigs in 1931. Using Shope's technique, Smith, Andrewes, and Laidlaw of England's Medical Research Council cultured it from a human in 1933. They and Shope in 1935 and 1936, respectively, identified it as the virus circulating in the 1918 pandemic. In 1933, Shope identified the Shope papilloma virus, which infects rabbits. His discovery later assisted other researchers to link the papilloma virus to warts and cervical cancer. He received the 1957 Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award and was an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.