Edward Jenner

An English physician and scientist, widely known as the father of immunology, credited with creating the world's first vaccine. In 1798 Jenner published An Inquiry into the Variolae Vaccinae, describing how inoculating patients with cowpox protected them from the far deadlier disease smallpox, and coining the terms vaccine and vaccination from Variolae vaccinae, the Latin for pustules of the cow. Smallpox killed roughly one in ten people in his era, and in crowded cities the toll reached one in five, so Jenner's method, refined and expanded over the following two centuries, is credited with saving more lives than the work of any other individual in medical history and underlies the eventual global eradication of smallpox in 1980. Beyond his central discovery, Jenner served as physician to King George IV, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, worked as a magistrate and mayor of his home town of Berkeley, and published early natural history observations on the brood parasitism of cuckoos.