Johan Hultin (October 7, 1924 – January 22, 2022) was a Swedish-born American pathologist known for recovering tissues containing traces of the 1918 influenza virus that killed millions worldwide.
[6] The Hultin couple had some experience with permafrost excavation after assisting at an Alaska dig site under the supervision of paleontologist Otto Geist in the summer of 1949.
[1] In 1951, Johan Hultin tried to isolate the 1918 influenza virus from victims who had been buried in the Alaskan permafrost of a town called Brevig Mission.
[7] Nearly 50 years later, in July 1997, Hultin read an article in the journal Science written by virologist Jeffery Taubenberger who published the initial genetic sequence of the 1918 flu virus.
Again he received permission to dig for victims of the 1918 flu pandemic, and this time he unearthed the remains of an obese woman, roughly thirty years old, whom he christened "Lucy".
This sample and others found in U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) archives allowed researchers to completely analyze the critical gene structures of the 1918 virus.