Herdis von Magnus (23 September 1912 – 15 March 1992, Gentofte) was a Danish virologist and polio expert.
[2][3][4] Herdis von Magnus was born in Bogense, Denmark to teachers Hans Hansen (1888–1960) and Astrid Marie Nielsen-Rye (1885–1945).
Then she acquired a position as an assistant at the State Serum Institute in 1944 and started her own comprehensive study of encephalomyelitis in mice using a virus discovered by virologist Max Theiler in 1937.
[5] Virologist Jonas Salk published his pioneering work in the spring of 1953 announcing a new polio vaccine, which was inactivated with formalin.
In Denmark, a polio vaccination campaign began In April 1955, just ten days after the U.S. health authorities launched its nationwide inoculation effort.