John Franklin Enders (February 10, 1897 - September 8, 1985) was an American biomedical scientist and "the Father of Modern Vaccines". 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". Salk applied the Enders-Weller-Robbins technique to produce large quantities of poliovirus, and then develop a polio vaccine in 1952. In 1954, Enders and Peebles isolated measles virus from an 11-year-old boy and began to develop a measles vaccine. In 1960, an Enders team began trials on 1,500 mentally retarded children in New York City and on 4,000 children in Nigeria. In 1961, New York Times announced the measles vaccine effective. He died in 1985 at the age of 88, holding honorary doctoral degrees from thirteen universities.