Joseph Smadel
January 10, 1907 - July 21, 1963
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Scientific Discipline: Microbial Biology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1957)
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Joseph Smadel spent his career studying and developing effective treatments for rickettsial diseases. Working with the U.S. Army Medical Department during World War II, he studied outbreaks of typhus in the European theater and during field studies in Malaysia. Utilizing new laboratory methodology such as ultra-centrifugation and chemical fractionation, he was able to conclude that the antimicrobial chloramphenicol was an inexpensive and potent treatment for rickettsia. He was awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1962.
Smadel earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania and his medical degree at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He began his research career in virology at the Rockefeller Institute. During World War II he became active duty with the U.S. Army Medical Department Professional Service School, where in 1943 he served as chief virologist with the First Medical General Laboratory. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he took over as the director of the Department of Virus and Rickettsial Diseases with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He accepted a position in 1956 at the National Institutes of Health as the associate director and chief of the Laboratory of Virology and Rickettsiology, where he served until 1963.
