The virologist and parasitologist Thomas Weller was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with his Harvard colleagues John Enders and Frederick Robbins for developing methods for growing the polio virus in the laboratory.

The Harvard trio published their breakthrough in October 1949 in a paper in the journal Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine entitled “Cultivation of poliomyelitis virus in cultures of human foreskin and embryonic tissues”.

This pioneering research enabled others to develop the polio vaccine that has resulted in the near-eradication of the disease from the world. The work found immediate applications to vitally important medical problems and opened up new fields of virus research, making it possible to grow a large number of other viruses in the laboratory and to create many other vaccines.

Weller also isolated the rubella (German measles) virus and the varicella-zoster virus (the common cause of chicken-pox in children and shingles in adults) and showed that the rubella virus and herpes virus could be transmitted from mother to foetus, producing birth defects.

Weller obtained his viral sample for congenital rubella from the urine of one of his sons who, at 10, developed signs of a particularly severe case of measles. He injected the boy’s urine into cultures of human tissue — the membrane surrounding the foetus. He watched through a microscope for characteristic signs of viral infection and eventually saw them.

Wary of claiming to have isolated the virus, he obtained urine samples from two boys at a school where a rubella outbreak was occurring and another from a Harvard student. Each produced changes similar to those seen in his son’s cultures. He had isolated the rubella virus. Today the vaccine that resulted from isolating the rubella virus is part of the standard MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination. Undoubtedly, the work of Weller and his colleagues revolutionised public health.

Weller’s contributions to parasitology included research on the control of schistosomiasis, a devastating disease, second only to malaria. Also called bilharzia, it is caused by several species of fluke (freshwater snails). It is common in Africa, Asia and South America, affecting many people in developing countries, particularly children who play in infected waters.

About 90 per cent of individuals infected with polio — a highly contagious disease for which there is no cure — show no symptoms at all. The rest suffer from a range of symptoms if the virus enters the blood stream, including muscle weakness and paralysis. The ravages of the disease were graphically illustrated by the rows of breathing machines filling hospital wards. In the 1880s epidemics in Europe and the US killed or crippled thousands of people, mostly young children.

After the work of Weller and his colleagues two vaccines were developed and used throughout the world to combat the disease. The first was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk; the second, an oral vaccine, was developed by Albert Sabin in 1960. Because the Sabin vaccine is cheap, easily administered and highly effective, it is the one used to control polio in many countries.

In 1988 the World Health Organisation headed a successful global campaign to eradicate polio, reducing the annual number of diagnosed cases by about 99 per cent. If the campaign is successful, polio will be the second disease to be completely eliminated by mankind — the other was smallpox, eradicated in 1979.

Thomas Huckle Weller was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1915. He was educated at the Ann Arbor High School and in 1932 entered the University of Michigan, where his father, Carl Weller, worked as a pathologist at the medical school. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1936 in medical zoology. After graduation he worked for two summers at the University of Michigan Biological Station on fish parasites. In 1937 he was awarded a master’s degree for this work. In 1936 he entered the Harvard Medical School and was given facilities for research in the Department of Comparative Pathology and Tropical Medicine.

In 1940 he received his medical degree and began his clinical training at the children’s hospital in Boston. In 1942 he interrupted his training to join the US Army Medical Corps. He was posted to the Antilles Medical Laboratory, Puerto Rico, as head of the departments of bacteriology, virology and parasitology, attaining the rank of major. The laboratory was responsible for malaria control at US military bases throughout the Caribbean,

In 1945 he returned to the children’s hospital in Boston for a further year of clinical training. In 1947 he joined the new Research Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Medical Centre. In 1949 he was appointed assistant director of this division and later lecturer, assistant professor and then associate professor in the Department of Comparative Pathology and Tropical Medicine of the Harvard Medical School. In 1954 he was appointed Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Tropical Public Health and head of the department at the Harvard School of Public Health, a post he held until 1981 when he retired as emeritus professor.

Weller served on a number of national and international health agencies including committees of the WHO, the Pan-American Health Organisation, the US Public Health Service and the International Health Organisation of the Rockefeller Foundation. These activities obliged him to travel widely. He was also involved in the establishment, in 1972, of a research and training centre for young physicians and scientists interested in tropical medicine in a rural area of Salvador, Brazil, where Chagas disease and schistosomiasis were highly endemic. The centre was active until 1984.

Weller’s autobiographical book, Growing Pathogens in Tissue Cultures: Fifty Years in Academic Tropical, Medicine, Pediatrics and Virology, was published in 2004.

In addition to the Nobel Prize Weller received awards from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. In 1964 he was inducted into the US National Academy of Sciences.

Weller was regarded by many as one of the great scientists of the 20th century who inspired numerous colleagues during his lifetime. He was the leader of his field for many decades.

His wife, two sons and a daughter survive him.

Professor Thomas Weller, virologist and parasitologist, was born on June 15, 1915. He died on August 23, 2008, aged 93