NY Times: Japanese researcher who developed chicken pox vaccine dead at 85

Dr. Michiaki Takahashi, who was inspired by his ill son to develop the chicken pox vaccine, has died at the age of 85, reports the NY Times.

Takahashi died of heart failure at his home in Osaka, Japan.

He was a research fellow at Baylor Medical College in Houston in 1964 when his son came down with a severe case of chicken pox ( photo by Dominic Sayers)

Takahashi went back to Japan the following year and began working on a vaccine.

“I realized then that I should use my knowledge of viruses to develop a chickenpox vaccine.”  he said last year in an interview with the Financial Times.

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The rest is history. Thanks to Takahashi, chicken pox is largely a disease of the past.

You can read more about how he developed the vaccine and the story of his son in the NY Times.