[2] In 1947, Salk accepted a professorship at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he undertook a project beginning in 1948 to determine the number of different types of poliovirus.

Many countries began polio immunization campaigns using Salk's vaccine, including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium.

[12] The family moved from East Harlem to 853 Elsmere Place in the Bronx,[13] with some time spent in Queens at 439 Beach 69th Street, Arverne.

Named after the founder of City College of New York (CCNY), it was "a launching pad for the talented sons of immigrant parents who lacked the money—and pedigree—to attend a top private school", according to David Oshinsky, his biographer.

"What made the place special," he writes, "was the student body that had fought so hard to get there...driven by their parents.... From these ranks, of the 1930s and 1940s, emerged a wealth of intellectual talent, including more Nobel Prize winners—eight—and PhD recipients than any other public college except the University of California at Berkeley."

Tuition was "comparatively low, better still, it did not discriminate against Jews...while most of the surrounding medical schools—Cornell, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale—had rigid quotas in place."

Francis had recently joined the faculty of the medical school after working for the Rockefeller Foundation, where he had discovered the type B influenza virus.

"[15]: 25  After graduating from medical school, Salk began his residency at New York's prestigious Mount Sinai Hospital, where he again worked in Francis's laboratory.

For the first year, he gathered supplies and researchers, including Julius Youngner, Byron Bennett, L. James Lewis, Elsie N. Ward, and secretary Lorraine Friedman who joined Salk's team as well.

[39][40] Salk preferred not to have his career as a scientist affected by too much personal attention, as he had always tried to remain independent and private in his research and life, but this proved to be impossible.

"Young man, a great tragedy has befallen you—you've lost your anonymity", the television personality Ed Murrow said to Salk shortly after the onslaught of media attention.

Scientists and journalists who regularly dealt with Salk would come to see him in more human terms, but many still initially approached him with the same drop-jawed wonder, as though some of the stardust might rub off.

"[45] For the most part, Salk was "appalled at the demands on the public figure he has become and resentful of what he considers to be the invasion of his privacy", wrote The New York Times, a few months after his vaccine announcement.

He received a presidential citation, a score of awards, four honorary degrees, half a dozen foreign decorations, and letters from thousands of fellow citizens.

[33] In the years after Salk's discovery, many supporters, in particular the National Foundation, "helped him build his dream of a research complex for the investigation of biological phenomena 'from cell to society'.

"[47] Called the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, it opened in 1963 in the San Diego neighborhood of La Jolla, in a purpose-built facility designed by the architect Louis Kahn.

Salk believed that the institution would help new and upcoming scientists along in their careers, as he said himself, "I thought how nice it would be if a place like this existed and I was invited to work there.

"[48] In 1966, Salk described his "ambitious plan for the creation of a kind of Socratic academy where the supposedly alienated two cultures of science and humanism will have a favorable atmosphere for cross-fertilization.

There is talk here of the possibility, once the secret of how the cell is triggered to manufacture antibodies is discovered, that a single vaccine may be developed to protect a child against many common infectious diseases.

For the ultimate purpose of science, humanism and the arts, in his judgment, is the freeing of each individual to cultivate his full creativity, in whichever direction it leads.

... As if to prepare for Socratic encounters such as these, the institute's architect, Louis Kahn, has installed blackboards in place of concrete facings on the walls along the walks.

He cofounded The Immune Response Corporation (IRC) with Kevin Kimberlin and patented Remune, an immunologic therapy, but was unable to secure liability insurance for the product.

As a biologist, he believes that his science is on the frontier of tremendous new discoveries; and as a philosopher, he is convinced that humanists and artists have joined the scientists to achieve an understanding of man in all his physical, mental and spiritual complexity.

"[49] Salk told his cousin, Joel Kassiday, at a meeting of the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future on Capitol Hill in 1984 that he was optimistic that ways to prevent most human and animal diseases would eventually be developed.

Salk describes his biophilosophy as the application of a "biological, evolutionary point of view to philosophical, cultural, social and psychological problems."

... People think of biology in terms of such practical matters as drugs, but its contribution to knowledge about living systems and ourselves will in the future be equally important.

The day after his graduation from medical school in 1939, Salk married Donna Lindsay, a master's candidate at the New York College of Social Work.

"[16]: 99 They had three children: Peter, who also became a physician and a part-time professor of infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh;[29][30][53] Darrell, who also worked with vaccines and genetics and eventually retired from the pediatrics faculty at the University of Washington School of Medicine;[54] and Jonathan Salk, an adult and child psychiatrist and Assistant Clinical Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

On June 23, 1995, Salk died from heart failure at the age of 80 in La Jolla,[56] and was buried at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego.

[57][58] ... in recognition of his 'historical medical' discovery ... Dr. Salk's achievement is meritorious service of the highest magnitude and dimension for the commonwealth, the country and mankind."