The scientist I most admire: Edward Jenner

Science is full of people whose contributions make them admirable. I particularly like biological sciences and among the many scientists related to this area I greatly admire Edward Jenner. I admire him because he was the father of vaccination, a discovery that has saved millions of lives.

Edward Jenner was an English physician and scientist who developed the first vaccine, in 1796.  Although in those times there were already techniques to immunize the body against diseases, these were very dangerous, since several of these techniques consisted of introducing secretions into the body (for example, pus from scabs) containing microorganisms of the disease against which the patient was to be immunized, but this often led to the onset of the disease and even death.  Edward Jenner discovered that people infected with a cow disease called cowpox (a "smallpox-like disease" of cows that produces mild, non-lethal symptoms in humans) were immune to smallpox. Knowing this, Jenner inoculated cowpox pus into a boy named James Phipps, who became ill with cowpox and after his recovery was inoculated with pus from smallpox scabs. As he expected, the boy did not get smallpox and he repeated the test on other patients to prove that his method was effective in preventing this disease. Thus vaccination was born and also began the eradication of smallpox, a disease that up to that time had caused many deaths. 

Edward Jenner was born in 1749, in the town of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, in southern England. He entered Wotton-under-Edge Grammar School, located four miles east of Berkeley. Jenner was a researcher, a physician in his hometown and also a poet. In the field of zoology, he was the first person to describe the parasitism of the bird called cuckoo. He described how the newly hatched cuckoo pushed eggs and newly hatched chicks from its host's nest. He was also elected mayor of his hometown Berkeley, where he died in 1823, at the age of 73. 

Jenner performing the first vaccination.