SUPPLEMENT ARTICLE
Memories and Vignettes From Friends of Hilary
Koprowski
Don Gilden1 and Paul Lieberman2
1
Department of Neurology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora; and 2Infectious Disease Division, Massachusetts General Hospital,
Cambridge
A VERY SPECIAL FRIEND
I remain sad that I could not join the 2014 symposium
for Hilary. On many occasions I have addressed Hilary,
who was a very special friend for >50 years, such as
when he turned 70 and 90 years old and when he became
Philadelphia citizen of the year. A rare appreciation of our
relationship was the fact that Hilary named one of his
(ferocious?) dogs “Norrby.” I am grateful that my name
appears among those who were his special friends.
Erling Norrby
THE TENDED GARDEN
The vast, vast majority of us are destined to be forgotten
in the fog of history. Like untended and rarely visited
graves overgrown with weeds, with leaning headstones
and weathered carvings, increasingly unremembered as
immediate family and contemporaries die, our glorious
accomplishments fade into nothingness. However,
some very few are remembered. Their accomplishments
are revisited, the headstones of their memory are perpetually up righted, and their works are a tended garden.
Such a one is Hilary Koprowski.
Ellen Heber-Katz
JOIE DE VIVRE
After the training course for the Epidemic Intelligence
Service at the Centers for Disease Control and
Correspondence: Don Gilden, MD, Department of Neurology, B-182, University of
Colorado School of Medicine, 12700 E 19th Ave, Rm 5014, Aurora, CO 80045 (don.
[email protected]).
The Journal of Infectious Diseases® 2015;212(S1):S5–11
© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Infectious
Diseases Society of America. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail:
[email protected].
DOI: 10.1093/infdis/jiv243
Prevention (CDC), I was offered a list of assignments,
one of which was at the Wistar Institute in an anthrax
laboratory. I was not interested in anthrax, initially (it
later turned out to be fascinating, and some of my
work was published during the 2001 anthrax attacks).
However, I had read some of Hilary’s papers and
noted that he was moving from Lederle Laboratories
to head the Wistar Institute. These papers were interesting scientifically and beautifully written. Thus, I campaigned for the assignment, and fortunately no one
else was interested. This turned out to be the most important career decision I ever made. Soon after arriving
at Wistar, I went to see Hilary to ask him if I could work
in his virology laboratory. He was welcoming, and that
led me to work on polio virus and, subsequently, on rubella virus, rabies virus, and other viruses, leading to
vaccines against them. I learned a lot from Hilary, not
only about virology, but also about music, art, and, perhaps most important, joie de vivre.
Stanley Plotkin
ALWAYS THE VISIONARY
I had the privilege of knowing Hilary under 4 different
circumstances. I first met him when I was a graduate
student with Heinz Kohler at Roswell Park. I was working on the structural basis of anti-idiotypic antibodies
and their underlying mechanistic actions, and Hilary
and Wistar investigators were moving forward with
anti-idiotypes in the clinic. I saw him with the eyes of
a student and was in awe of his accomplishments.
The second circumstance was when I had to face him
across a negotiation table to license antibody technology, when I was at IDEC Pharmaceuticals in San Diego. I
then saw him as a force to be reckoned with and was in
awe of his negotiation skills and how he built the technology transfer machinery at the Wistar Institute: the
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Wistar was Biotechnology before Biotechnology. The third circumstance was as an institute director—and my boss. Hilary
recruited me from IDEC to Wistar when he realized that I was
seriously considering leaving IDEC to work for Carlo Croce,
then at the Fels Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Biology. Hilary called me on a Sunday night and told me that he
had booked a flight for me for the next morning and that I better be on it!!! I was in awe of his gumption. It was hard to say no
to a determined person with conviction. The fourth circumstance was as a confidant and colleague. After we both left Wistar, Hilary would call to ask for favors: to review papers, to
review drafts of his grants, to speak to investors and principals
on his behalf, to get advice on antibody engineering, to read his
business plans, to speak about science, and, in the last year of his
life, to try to convince me that we should start a new institute in
Poland!!! Hilary was always the visionary, and appropriately, at
the time of writing, a new antibody therapy for Ebola virus disease is being tried in patients. The treatment involves antibodies
that were produced in tobacco plants, a technology that he
championed the last 10 years of his scientific career. I will always be in awe and think fondly of the man, the myth, and
the legend of Hilary. As will others, I will dearly miss him.
Thomas Kieber-Emmons
A DEVOTION TO “REAL SCIENCE”
When Hilary invited me to join the Wistar Institute, I was interested in host defense and its failure in malnutrition. Hilary’s
plans for me were rather different, but his persuasive efforts to
sway me to his wishes were not successful. I applied for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, and although it was approved,
it fell below the funding range. When I received this disappointing message and was brooding at my desk and trying to figure out
my next step, Hilary appeared unannounced, smiling broadly,
and declared in his distinctive Polish accent, “Congratulations,
now you will be able to devote yourself to real science.” This comment and his smile were no balm for my injured ego, and I responded instantly with an Anglo-Saxon vulgar invective
suggesting what he should do to himself and he left. As I reflected
immediately on what I, a recently appointed junior member of
the Wistar Institute, said to its world famous director, I came
to the conclusion that I had just sealed my fate and fully expected
to be fired. Although nothing much happened right away, in
mid-afternoon I received a phone call from Peggy O’Neill, Hilary’s assistant, who, in her mellifluous voice, asserted, “Dr Koprowski would like to see you in his office at 5 o’clock. Can you
come?” Of course I could, and I fully expected that my assumption of being fired was correct. When I arrived and was ushered
into his office, I found him sitting at his desk with a pitcher of icecold martinis, and the only question he asked me was whether I
wanted an olive or a lemon peel in my glass. He made no allusion
then or ever to our earlier interaction, and instead of being fired,
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I remained at Wistar for some years, and my friendship with Hilary lasted until his death, when it was replaced by deep sadness
over this inevitability.
Michael Katz
LESSONS FROM A WORLD TRIP
This story captures much of Hilary as a man, scientist, and
friend. I had known him as a colleague and budding friend,
but this trip would define our future relationship. It was sometime in the 1970s. Hilary was going to a few meetings in Asia. I
was going to a few meetings in Europe. He called me and noted
that we could go around the world together: if I could get
him invited to the European meetings, he then would get
me to the Asian meetings. It worked. As we went forward,
Hilary noted that “we needed to bring 5 or 6 books each and
then . . . could share after finishing our own.” I agreed. A
week later, he had a list of what books I should buy! Lesson
1: Hilary was an intellectual, and of course he could assume
he knew better than me what I liked.
We proceeded to begin the trip. Suddenly, I found to my total
surprise that I was in first class. Hilary had quietly paid the difference. Lesson 2: Hilary could be very generous. As the flight
entered the heights, he began a theme of education (of me),
which became lessons 3, 4, and on. Hilary engaged me in the
values of a scientific career that was not limited to the laboratory
but included different cultures, friendships with people all over
the world, the pure joy and fun of medical research, and an
opening of new ideas for research. At the same time, to some
degree it helped begin my realization of the importance of
not being wary of big questions in medical science and of not
being afraid of some risk. I hope some of us will be able to do
as much for the next generations.
Bob Gallo
THE SEARCH FOR THE MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
VIRUS
I joined the Department of Neurology at the University of
Pennsylvania and the Wistar Institute primarily because of Hilary Koprowski and the strong group of virologists he had assembled. When he interviewed me, in 1970, he asked what I
wanted to do, and I told him that I wanted to find the virus
that causes multiple sclerosis. His eyes lit up, and he jumped
up and said that that’s exactly what he wanted to do, too, and
that I must come to work at Wistar. After I arrived, I quickly
realized that Dr Koprowski had a great ability to cut to the
chase scientifically. But when he had a new idea—and they
were legion—he wanted those studies done immediately. It was
not always easy to oblige him to do an additional study and to do
it quickly, and that led to some uncomfortable discussions. But
H. K.’s support and excitement for identifying the multiple
sclerosis virus was always there. We both devoted considerable
effort to isolating a virus or detecting viral footprints in multiple
sclerosis brain and from rodent species and primates that had
been inoculated with multiple sclerosis brain but were not able
to do so. I think of all of the different scientific studies that
H. K. was involved in during my 14 years at Wistar, the search
for the virus responsible for multiple sclerosis was what excited
him the most. Besides science, it was a joy to listen to Hilary play
piano or to discuss anything from good literature to good restaurants. His sense of humor and warmth were always evident.
Don Gilden
A TEACHER OF SO MUCH, WHO ASKED FOR SO
LITTLE
H. K. is definitely smiling about this supplement of the Journal
dedicated to his memory! There is nothing I can say that will
convey what a wonderful, kind, gracious human being Dr
Koprowski was. I worked with him for 40 years, and I will grieve
his absence for the next 40 years! He taught me so much and
asked so little in return. He went from being a boss to becoming
a dear friend. He is one of the greatest individuals I have ever
had the honor to meet. I thank my lucky stars every day that
my path in life drew me to his!
Sue Jones
WRITING A PAPER: A JOURNEY
Some time ago, when it was just becoming clear that the immune response to viral infections was at least in part responsible
for the observed pathology, Hilary and I, who were both interested in this subject, decided to write an article for Scientific
American on virus-induced immunopathology. We first met
in Washington and then at the Wistar Institute to discuss the
subject, but we didn’t succeed in writing anything.
Hilary, in his great wisdom, said to me, “My boy, the problem
is we get too distracted in Washington and Philadelphia. What
we have to do is find a quiet place where there are no disturbances to write the article, such as the Cayman Islands.” The
next thing I knew, we were packing our bags. My wife, Susan,
decided to come along, and Hilary asked his youngest son,
Christopher, to join us.
On the morning of the first day, I came down to breakfast
with my writing pad and a number of scientific references,
and Hilary announced that we had just completed a long trip
and that we should rest and see the island for the next couple
of days and then get to work. We had a wonderful 2 days.
On the morning of the third day, I came down to breakfast
with my writing pad and scientific references with the intention
of getting to work after breakfast. Hilary announced that, although we had traveled around the island, the best part of the
Cayman Islands was under water and that we couldn’t possibly
come to the islands without snorkeling for a couple of days. Hilary was right, and it was a memorable experience.
On the morning of the fifth day I came down to breakfast
with my writing pad and references, ready to begin to work.
However, Hilary announced that the island was noted for its
wonderful fish delicacies and that we should go to the market
and pick out some special fish and lobster for our dinner over
the next couple of days. When we returned to the hotel, it was
late afternoon, and Hilary announced that Susan and Christopher, who were wonderful cooks, would prepare dinner and
that, with a glass of rum in our hands, we would inspire
them. I might add that it was a delicious meal.
On the morning of the sixth day, I came down to breakfast
with my writing pad and scientific references and decided to
take things into my own hands. With some trepidation, I announced to Hilary that I had contacted the hotel management
and requested a small conference room in which we could
work but that the management had informed me that none
were available. Hilary said, “Don’t worry about it, my boy. We
should not work indoors anyway.” Instead, Hilary said that he
had already asked the management to put up 2 hammocks on
the beach with a small table in between, where Susan, who was
a reporter before she became an architect, would write down our
inspired words. Before starting, of course, Hilary ordered some
rum for both of us, and as we were lying in our hammocks drinking rum, we discussed a variety of subjects. Every time Susan tried
to write down some of the points, Hilary would say, “Don’t write
those points down. Those remarks are off the record.” Then, for
the next hour, as the sun was beginning to set, we finished the
first line of the paper. Soon after, it became too dark to write anything more, and we went off to dinner.
On the morning of the seventh day, I came down to breakfast
without my writing pad. On the way to the airport, Hilary announced that this was a very successful trip. Now that we had
the first line written, everything else would follow easily. He
then said, “My boy, go back to Washington, and it will now
take you no time to finish the paper.”
Three months later, after many drafts and a search of the literature, I finished the paper and sent a copy to Hilary, who said
it was marvelous. The paper was sent off and, to my surprise,
was accepted by Scientific American. In response, Hilary announced that we would never have accomplished this if we
had not gone to the Cayman Islands.
I think that all of Hilary’s long-time friends would agree that
Hilary made life interesting and joyful and that, for this, we owe
him much and are indeed grateful.
Abner Louis Notkins
ON WOMEN IN SCIENCE
At the time I joined Wistar, there were a number of woman scientists on the scientific staff. Although none were married or
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had children, this observation said to me, go for it. In the late
1960s, equal rights and equal pay for woman, especially in the
sciences, where there were few role models, was a point of active
discussion. In the preceding generation, some women did do
science and a few were principal investigators, but they often
worked in a volunteer, subservient capacity. In the 1940s and
1950s in the United States, when I was raised, husbands were
meant to leave the home and provide for the family, while
women, even educated women, were meant to stay at home,
raise the family, respect authority, and be circumspect. Although I thought I was joining the scientific staff, I was hired
as a research associate. But what difference could that make
to me? I was delighted to be employed at the Wistar Institute,
which had captivated me at my very first visit, as had the director, Hilary Koprowski.
I came from my stint as a postdoc at the University of California–Berkeley in Drosophila genetics. However, before I entered graduate school in genetics, I had worked for 4 years
learning and doing cell culture at Columbia University and
Johns Hopkins University and as the only employee at a biotech
started by a Wistar alum, where we made cell cultures and reagents for sale and experimented with vaccines to the elusive
human hepatitis and bovine pink eye viruses. Since all of this
was on my curriculum vitae, I was somewhat surprised when
Hilary told me that I would work with John Ross, a Wistar
staff member, for several months, to learn cell culture techniques. I thought, okay, maybe there had been great advances
during the 4 years while I was getting my degrees and doing
my postdoc work. So, I was “taught” sterile technique, how to
make cell cultures and media, and many other technical things,
all of which I knew and had taught/sold to others. I loudly lamented in private, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell John Ross
or Hilary that “I know all of this and more; couldn’t we please
stop already?” We did, but only because the time allotted for my
“education” was up, not because I complained.
As discussed, we started a somatic cell genetics program in
Hilary’s laboratory, and I found a scientific focus to dig my
teeth into. My biological clock was ticking, so I also gave
birth to 2 healthy babies, despite working in a laboratory
where everyone worked with viruses, even cytomegalovirus,
with its capacity to cross the placenta and damage the fetus. I
talked about this quietly in the laboratory, where everyone assured me they were “being very careful.” However, I also
made known that I had a severe penicillin allergy, and despite
everyone assuring me that they were “being very careful” with
antibiotics in their cell culture media, I spent one year fighting
a continuous string of wheal and flare reactions. I was afraid but
couldn’t stop working. People begged me to slow down as I tore
down the Wistar central staircase and down the stairs to the
subway surface cars that would take me to 30th Street station
with a belly full of one or the other gestating child, but I was
in control over the stumbling and unthreatened. It appears
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that never had a Wistar scientist carried a child while on the
job. I also found that maternity leave had not entered into the
vocabulary of the institute, but I was free to take my month-long
vacation and maybe a week or 2 more. Hilary was supportive.
During these years, I accompanied Hilary on visits to collaborators and rivals throughout the northeast United States.
Always I had a small favor to do for him, picking up pickles
and sausages in New York were among my assignments, but
it was through these efforts that I was introduced to and became
part of the greater scientific community. I was content. The
strong portrait of Irena Koprowska in the family living room
and the picture of Hilary’s mother on his desk reassured me
that Hilary was sympathetic to strong women, but my continuing reticence to speak out in my own behalf did not work in my
favor.
With 2 small kids and my home a 1.5-hour commute away, I
was having trouble mixing in the social life that was part and
parcel of our working laboratory community. One day I joined
one of the usual cigar-smoking cocktail parties and missed the
last train to my small town so far away and with minimal train
service. Watching the red lights on the last car of the last evening train as it slowly rolled out of 30th Street station without
me on board haunts me still, as does the phone call to my husband to ask him to bundle the kids into their sleeping suits and
drive 30 minutes to pick me up at the more frequently served
Paoli station. With that came the full realization that, although
I had been hired to be the majordomo of Hilary’s ever growing
laboratory, that chapter was over, and I had to make an independent career or give up, which was not a personal option.
So I apprehensively applied for my own grants, which were
soon funded, and I asked for and was granted my own laboratory space. It takes some women a long time to grow up.
I was then selected, with 4 other scientists, to ride out, or not,
the reconstruction of the Wistar animal facility at the University
of Pennsylvania–owned Lippincott Building in Center City,
home of the university’s dog colony and mouse facility. We
were connected to the Wistar glassware and supply delivery by
a van service, which also took us to seminars and staff meetings.
This semi-isolation was the best thing that ever happened to a
person who wanted independence, but it did not work out as
well for some of the other Lippincott denizens. Here I learned
with interest that all members of the Wistar scientific community
had retirement benefits through TIAA/CREF, but not I. After
much agonizing, I asked the scientific staff director, not Hilary,
about this “oversight” and was soon granted pension rights.
My last attempt at equity came when, as a full-fledged staff
member with good laboratories in Wistar itself, I found that
my other colleagues were receiving considerably more salary
than I. I was able to indulge myself in this gossip, but I could
not bring myself to discuss with Hilary the idea of equal pay
for equal work. Instead, my intrepid partner in life did. The answer was that Hilary really didn’t think I needed any more
salary because I was in a relationship and my other half made a
substantial amount of money. That’s as far as that went, and
again I had avoided direct confrontation. This was later resolved
at a site visit for the renewal of our NIH/National Cancer Institute Cancer Core grant, when it was noted that the woman were
paid considerably less than the men at Wistar and that this
would have to be resolved before the grant would be funded.
As a program director, I was the only woman paid from this
source.
These remembrances are written in loving memory of Hilary
Koprowski, a great director of a very fine research institute at an
interesting time in science. But then I am biased, because I
worked for and with him, and in his own way he mentored
me to independence. It didn’t kill me, and indeed it made me
better.
Barbara B. Knowles
A REMEMBRANCE
An evening with Hilary was a dance that required physical and
mental stamina. He would rapidly and seamlessly shift his focus
between such different challenges as musical composition, making pesto, the provenance of a painting, or the production of
vaccines in transgenic plants. Such musings frequently ran
late into the night, punctuated only by the need to fill glasses
or attend to the dog at his feet. Hilary had an uncanny talent
for extracting the essence of a concept, a task, or an object,
whether it was a dry martini, a deconstructed happy birthday
tune, or a scientific hypothesis. In another incarnation, Hilary
might have written Satie’s “Gymnopédies” (although he favored
complex tone poems) or created Matisse’s gouaches découpés;
however, events and opportunities led him into the current of
science. Many owe their health to his trajectory; nonetheless,
unlike great works of art, comparable achievements in research
can have a short half-life in the public eye. Hilary’s son Christopher wrote me and other friends shortly after Hilary’s death
with profound disappointment that the New York Times had
not published an obituary. I wrote to key people at the Times
who cover science and medicine. They agreed that this was an
oversight and referred me to the obituary editor. She was persuaded, and we ultimately secured the public memorial Hilary
wanted and deserved.
Many of my colleagues point to reading Paul de Kruif’s book
Microbe Hunters during childhood as pivotal in their choice of
career. I was more captivated as a boy by tales of archaeologists
finding lost cities and explorers charting new routes across the
globe. Thus, my road to biomedical research and infectious diseases was circuitous. I wanted to be an anthropologist and only
moved into medicine because this seemed to be a good way to
have something to offer other cultures in exchange for mining
their myths and rituals. Toward the end of an internal medicine
residency at the University of Washington, I interviewed with
the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service but elected instead to
pursue additional training in neurology at the University of California–San Francisco when informed that I would not be able
to focus on work on infectious diseases in the developing world.
The emergence of AIDS in San Francisco and the pandemic that
followed brought me back on track and highlighted the challenge that has become my life’s work: improving global capacity
for pathogen discovery and surveillance, and understanding the
role of infection and immunity in chronic diseases. I joined
Michael Oldstone’s group at the Scripps Research Institute for
training in virology and pathogenesis. Shortly thereafter, he sent
me to retrieve Hilary from the Los Angeles airport. I’d known
Hilary’s son Christopher at the University of Chicago and
Chris’ wife, Mary, from Pittsburgh (she signed out her service
to me when I started internship). However, this was no preparation for meeting the patriarch who talked nonstop for 90 minutes about his latest passion, retroviruses and unexplained
neurologic diseases. A few months later, Floyd Bloom drew
my attention to a paper by Hilary and Rudy Rott, in which
they suggested that bipolar disorder was due to infection with
an as yet uncharacterized agent [1]. With encouragement
from Floyd, Michael, and Hilary, I decided to tackle this problem by using subtractive complementary DNA cloning—a project that took 3 years but ultimately demonstrated the power of
genetic methods for diagnostics and discovery and provided a
roadmap for proving and disproving links between microbes
and disease by using molecular methods [2, 3]. Throughout
his career, Hilary invested the majority of his effort in prophylaxis and treatment. He nonetheless loved the process of pathogen discovery and the implications of discovery for medicine
and public health.
On 18 June 1980, Hilary recounted his version of the development of the polio vaccine for a series established by Fred
Rapp, entitled “Frontiers of Virology.” He began and closed
his essay with references to Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost
Time (also known as Remembrance of Things Past). I will use
Hilary’s own words in closing this essay dedicated to his memory. “No matter what our fate has been, not sorrow, nor a joy, a
triumph, a tragedy, need be irretrievably lost but may be preserved as a creative process in either art or science, in it freshness and dew.” Although he is not with us to participate in
discoveries yet to come, each of the essays in this monograph
is evidence that Hilary has not been lost. He lives on in the
art, music, and science that we share.
Ian Lipkin
KINDNESS OF HEART, GENEROSITY OF SPIRIT
While first as an undergraduate (1960–1964) and later as a
medical student (1964–1968) at the University of Pennsylvania,
I often walked by the Wistar Institute. Everyone told me it was
an anatomy museum, but I couldn’t tell from the outside if
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much was happening. My interest in Wistar changed during my
first year of medical school, after I met Esther Bromfeld, who
was doing her graduate studies under Andrzej Kozinski, a senior member of the Wistar faculty. Although I met Kozinski,
a pioneer of the study of bacteriophage replication, I never
had the opportunity to interact with his legendary boss, Hilary
Koprowski, who moved in 1957 from Lederle Laboratories to
assume the directorship at Wistar.
Twenty-five years later, in 1991, Don Gilden introduced me
to Hilary, with whom I developed a wonderful friendship that
spanned 3 decades. Conversation with Hilary was always rich,
warm, and edifying. While Hilary had an encyclopedic knowledge of science, art, music, and European history, his gentle
manner kept you from feeling too inferior. Hilary emanated a
special kindness of heart and generosity of spirit. Although I
often thought of myself as one of his very special friends, I
quickly realized that his magnetic personality allowed many
people to feel as though they were part of his inner circle.
Hilary was uncommonly supportive—he had read many of
my papers on prions and decided that I had discovered something important. He was quite knowledgeable about scrapie because he and his colleagues had looked in vain for activation of
the interferon system in mice infected with the scrapie agent
[1]. Hilary nominated me for membership in the National
Academy of Sciences, and I was elected in the spring of 1992.
That same spring, Hilary and I were in Taos, New Mexico, at a
Keystone conference on the cell biology of virus entry, replication, and pathogenesis, when one of the presenters started discussing scrapie and seemed to be taking credit for my work.
Now the very virologists who had vociferously attacked my findings appeared to be trying to appropriate the credit that I believed
that I deserved. Hilary reassured me that such behavior was commonplace. When he returned to Philadelphia, he sent me a slide
entitled “Four Stages of Adopting a New Idea.”
The body of the slide had 4 bullets, which read
• “It’s impossible, it’s nonsense, don’t waste my time.
• Maybe it’s possible, but it’s weak and uninteresting. It’s
clearly not important.
• It’s true and I told you so. I always said it was a good idea.
• I thought of it first.”
Over the years, our friendship blossomed. I always looked
forward to seeing him, and the feeling seemed mutual. When
Hilary decided that my work on prions deserved the Nobel
Prize, he became my most vociferous advocate. Did his campaigning make a difference? I will never know, but I can’t imagine it was deleterious. After several years of pushing, Hilary
became discouraged in the fall of 1996, when the Nobel Prize
had not been awarded to me. A year later, when “the call
from Stockholm” came, Hilary was the first person whom I telephoned once the award was confirmed on the radio [2]. He was
ecstatic!
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Perhaps the most telling story about Hilary’s generous spirit
came the next spring, when he said to me, “Stan, it feels strange.
I am no longer campaigning for you. I feel a little empty since I
no longer need to plot how to convince the Swedes.”
Each spring, after the infamous garden party at the annual
meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington,
D. C., Hilary, Carlo Croce, Bob Gallo, and I would have dinner
together, which rapidly became a warm tradition. At each of
these fabulous meals, Hilary would regale us in rich conversation. I always looked forward to these feasts for the mind filled
with gastronomic delights and, more importantly, expansive
thoughts. After such a dinner in 2004, I asked Hilary if he
could help Sunnie Evers and me see the Pauline Chapel in
the Vatican. This is the Pope’s private chapel, and it contains
Michelangelo’s last 2 frescoes, one depicting the crucifixion of
St. Peter nailed to the cross upside down and the other showing
the conversion of St. Paul; both were painted in 1541. Hilary
said that he had a cousin who is a Jesuit priest in the Vatican
and that he would write him. Hilary’s cousin connected him
with Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was the Pope’s private secretary
and named Archbishop of Krakow in 2005 and a cardinal in
2006. Hilary and Dziwisz began a nightly email conversation
in Polish.
Some days later, Hilary called to report that I needed a cell
phone that worked in Europe so that I could receive a call
from the Vatican when we were in Rome. One afternoon, 6
weeks later, when Sunnie and I were visiting Rome, a call
came from the Vatican. The woman calling spoke excellent English and said, “Tomorrow is your lucky day since you will be
seeing the Pope.” I thanked her and said we would report to
the east portal, which was attended by the Swiss Guard,
promptly at 2 o’clock.
Hilary had told me that we would be meeting Pope John Paul
II and that we should ask him to let us see his private chapel.
After arriving at the Vatican, we waited for almost 2 hours,
alongside >100 Poles accompanied by their parish priests. At
around 4:00 PM, the Polish Catholics were admitted in droves,
but our names were not called. Panicked, I asked the Swiss
Guard to look for “Koprowski”—this was the magical name
on their list, and we entered through the portone. After walking
up a grand stone staircase, we went into an elevator with the
floor numbers written in Latin script. Upon arriving at the
fourth floor, we exited into a grand hallway with Raphael paintings flanking each side.
First, the faithful and their priests were called into a huge
room where Pope John Paul II was sitting in a large chair.
His feet were elevated, revealing his brilliant red leather slippers.
Each priest would sit in a chair next to the Pope, and his dozen
or so parishioners would gather behind for their photo opportunity. By the time Sunnie and I made our way to the Pope, the
chair had disappeared, and I had no opportunity to ask for a
favor. I also broke protocol by not kneeling to kiss the Pope’s
ring. The previous day, I told Sunnie that no Jewish American
scientist [2] was going to kiss the ring of the Pope, and I expounded on the number of viruses, bacteria, and fungi in the
saliva deposited on his ring by the 150 people who preceded
us. When I shook the Pope’s hand instead, he seemed confused
and turned his head to look at Dziwisz. Somehow Dziwisz knew
who we were and explained that I was from the United States,
“Stati Uniti.” After Sunnie shook his hand, the Pope exclaimed
“Americani.”
Defeated, we walked out with no plan to visit the Pauline
Chapel. Temporarily flummoxed, I approached the man in
charge, who wore a lavender cutaway and had a security earpiece, and told him that I would like to speak with Dziwisz,
whom he summoned. I began, “Hilary Koprowski sends his
very best regards.”
In flawless English, Dziwisz responded, “Oh, give Dr
Koprowski my very best. What can I do for you?”
“We would like to see the Pauline Chapel.”
Dziwisz asked, “How long will you be here?”
I answered, “For ten more days. We are available anytime,
just let us know.”
As Dziwisz was pulled away, he said, “It’s not possible to see
the Chapel in these times.” And then, he was gone. I had no idea
what he meant, and neither did Sunnie, who is an Italian Renaissance art historian. We were at a loss. Was the chapel closed
because the Vatican couldn’t afford proper security? This
seemed unlikely.
Later that year, I recounted this adventure to Hilary, who
loved the story. His generosity of spirit had made our Vatican
experience possible. A year would pass before we learned that
the historic frescoes in the Pauline Chapel were being restored
after suffering considerable water damage. The extensive scaffolding in the chapel prevented any visitors. Four more years
passed before Pope Benedict celebrated mass in the chapel, on
4 July 2009. In August, my friend Joaquin Navarro-Valls took us
into Pauline Chapel, ending a 5-year quest. Joaquin had been
the press secretary to Pope John Paul II for 25 years, as well
as the first nonclergy press secretary in Vatican history.
Being with Hilary was always a celebration of life. There was
never a dull moment! His painting collection was overwhelming,
his excitement about his latest musical composition was infectious, and his plans for new rabies vaccines were remarkably
clever. Despite a string of difficulties that plagued him as he
constantly tried to push back the frontiers of medicine and
virology, Hilary was rarely depressed; his indefatigable spirit
lifted him and those around him.
Hilary had the vision to produce a polio vaccine long before
his competitors [3]. Hilary’s work on an oral polio vaccine was
trailblazing [4], but politics eventually intervened and prevented
his oral vaccine from winning approval [5]. We discussed his
misfortune on several occasions—despite moments of disappointment in his voice as he reminisced, he always returned
to his upbeat, enthusiastic self and quickly segued the conversation to some future study that he wanted to do. But most of all,
his optimism inspired those around him, and he was confident
that so much could be accomplished and that success was just
over the horizon.
Hilary enriched my life and that of many others who were
lucky enough to have the opportunity to be counted among
his friends. He had many admirers and was by any measure
an historic figure in twentieth century science.
Stanley Prusiner
Note
Potential conflict of interest. Both authors: No reported conflicts.
Both authors have submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential
Conflicts of Interest. Conflicts that the editors consider relevant to the content of the manuscript have been disclosed.
References
1. Katz M, Koprowski H. Failure to demonstrate a relationship between
scrapie and production of interferon in mice. Nature 1968; 219:639–40.
2. Prusiner SB. Madness and memory. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2014.
3. Koprowski H, Jervis GA, Norton TW. Immune responses in human volunteers upon oral administration of a rodent-adapted strain of poliomyelitis virus. Am J Hyg 1952; 55:108–24.
4. Norrby E, Prusiner SB. Polio and Nobel prizes: looking back 50 years.
Ann Neurol 2007; 61:385–95.
5. Paul JR. A history of poliomyelitis. Yale studies in the history of science
and medicine. Vol 6. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971.
Memories of Hilary Koprowski
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