Ivar Wickman

Otto Ivar Wickman (10 July 1872 in Lund – 20 April 1914 in Saltsjöbaden) was a Swedish physician, who discovered in 1907 the epidemic and contagious character of poliomyelitis.

As a pupil of pediatrician Karl Oskar Medin, whom he held in high esteem, Wickman predominantly devoted himself to the studies of infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis).

Repeatedly having to cope with financial difficulties, he spent his last two years in Breslau and Straßburg, in both places working as an assistant to Adalbert Czerny, the co-founder of modern pediatrics.

Colleagues report that the failure of his application for the post of Professor of Pediatrics at the Karolinska Institute, which, until 1914, Medin had held, was a heavy blow for him.

On the one hand the members of the commission blamed Wickman for not having shown sufficient diversity in his research work: as many as half of his 22 scientific publications were dealing with polio.

Based on his observations he came to the conclusion that the incubation period of polio was three to four days, which had long been disputed but was confirmed in the middle of the twentieth century.

When in 1908, in Vienna, the discovery of the poliovirus by Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper was announced, Wickman did not give up his work as a clinical researcher and pediatrician.

Third in line after Heine and Medin, followed by Landsteiner and eleven more polio experts and two laymen (one of them US-president Franklin D. Roosevelt), his bronze bust was revealed.