In 1949, Enders,
Thomas Huckle Weller, and
Frederick Chapman Robbins reported successful
in vitro culture of an
animal virus—
poliovirus. The three received the 1954
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of the ability of
poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue". Meanwhile,
Jonas Salk applied the Enders-Weller-Robbins technique to produce large quantities of poliovirus, and then developed a
polio vaccine in 1952. Upon the 1954 polio vaccine field trial, whose success Salk announced on the radio, Salk became a public hero but failed to credit the many other researchers that his effort rode upon, and was somewhat shunned by America's scientific establishment. In 1954, Enders and
Thomas C. Peebles isolated
measlesvirus from an 11-year-old boy, David Edmonston. Disappointed by polio vaccine's development and involvement in some cases of polio and death—what Enders attributed to Salk's technique—Enders began development of
measles vaccine. Refusing credit for merely himself when
The New York Times announced the measles vaccine effective on September 17, 1961, Enders wrote to the newspaper to acknowledge the work of various colleagues and the collaborative nature of the research. He continued to work in virology research till the late 1970s and retired from the laboratory at the age of 80. ==Honors==