History of Virology

The history of virology can be traced as the personalities involved have described their concepts and published their experimental results. Although infections we now know as, e.g., rabies, yellow fever, smallpox, etc. were clinically evident in early human history, the initial isolation of individual viruses and their assignment to specific diseases did not occur until about 1898, 120 years ago, a proverbial drop in the bucket of time. Just one lifetime ago, Peter Medawar, awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1960, defined viruses as a piece of nucleic acid surrounded by bad news.