He was the first to isolate rotavirus, he demonstrated that the Japanese encephalitis virus is transmitted by mosquitoes, and he discovered that vitamin D increases intestinal absorption of calcium.
[2] As a first-year medical student, he and his classmate, Milton Rappaport, discovered that the primary effect of vitamin D is to increase intestinal absorption of calcium.
In 1936, he developed a method that used ultraviolet light to reduce the infectiousness of viruses, a technique that later was used to create commercial vaccines against rabies and influenza.
[4] While stationed in Guam with the U.S. Navy in World War II, he discovered that the Japanese encephalitis virus was spread by mosquitoes.
[3] After helping to found the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Hodes was appointed the first Herbert H. Lehman Professor and Chairman of Pediatrics in 1964.