Isabel Merrick Morgan (also Morgan Mountain) (20 August 1911 – 18 August 1996) was an American virologist at Johns Hopkins University, who prepared an experimental vaccine that protected monkeys against polio in a research team with David Bodian and Howard A. Howe. Their research led to the identification of three distinct serotypes of poliovirus, all of which must be incorporated for a vaccine to provide complete immunity from poliomyelitis. Morgan was the first to successfully use a killed-virus for polio inoculation in monkeys. After she married in 1949, she left the field of polio research in part because she was uncomfortable with trials that tested polio vaccines on the nerve tissue of children. She then worked on epidemiological studies on air pollution. Later in life, she was a consultant for studies of cancer therapies at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute.
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Early life and education
Isabel Merrick Morgan was born 20 August 1911, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Her parents were Thomas Hunt Morgan, a geneticist, and Lilian Vaughan Sampson, an experimental biologist. Isabel Morgan was the youngest of four children. Morgan's mother gave up her scientific career to raise all four children until they were each old enough for her to return to her husband's lab. Although she gave up her career, her and her children faced frequent exposure to visiting biologists who would visit the Morgans' summer vacation home near the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts.