Ernest Goodpasture, MD (1886-1960)

Dr. Goodpasture was the pathologist who discovered the first practical method for developing uncontaminated viruses in chick embryos, making possible the mass production of vaccines.

He was born in 1886 in Montgomery County, Tennessee. He earned an undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1912. This was followed by a Rockefeller Fellowship in Pathology and positions at, among other places, Harvard Medical School, in the U.S. Navy, and the University of the Philippines College of Medicine in Manila. Dr. Goodpasture returned to Vanderbilt in 1924 as chair and professor of Pathology.

In 1931, Dr. Goodpasture, in collaboration with Alice Woodruff, developed a method for providing a living environment for viral growth in fertile eggs. Their first success was with fowl pox, but within a year they had also grown both cowpox and cold sore viruses. Within a few years Dr. Goodpasture’s technique had made possible the production of vaccines against yellow fever by Max Theiler and influenza by Thomas Francis.

Dr. Goodpasture’s research enabled the development of vaccines against chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and other diseases.