Richard Shope
American virologist (1901-1966)
Richard Edwin Shope (December 25, 1901 – October 2, 1966) was an American virologist who, together with his mentor Paul A. Lewis at the Rockefeller Institute, identified influenzavirus A in pigs in 1931. Using Shope's technique, Smith, Andrewes, and Laidlaw of England's Medical Research Council cultured it from a human in 1933. They and Shope in 1935 and 1936, respectively, identified it as the virus circulating in the 1918 pandemic. In 1933, Shope identified the Shope papilloma virus, which infects rabbits. His discovery later assisted other researchers to link the papilloma virus to warts and cervical cancer. He received the 1957 Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award and was an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Career
In 1931 Shope worked as researcher and together with Paul A. Lewis at Rockefeller University discovered that the cause of swine flu was virtually identical to bacillus influenza, a bacterium that had in 1892 been identified as the cause for human influenza. Shope and Lewis went on to identify a virus that also had links to influenza, putting into doubt the thesis that flu was caused by a bacterial infection. Soon after this controversial discovery, Lewis traveled to Brazil to study an outbreak of yellow fever. The 28 year old Shope had put himself forward for this research trip, but his offer was refused by Lewis.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Shope” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.