Date

Discovery

1796

Cowpox virus used to vaccinate against smallpox by Jenner.

1892

Description of filterable infectious agent (TMV) by Ivanovsky.

1898

Concept of the virus as a contagious living form by Beijerinck.

1901

First description of a yellow fever virus by Dr Reed and his team.

1909

Identification of poliovirus by Landsteiner and Popper.

1911

Discovery of Rous sarcoma virus.

1931

Virus propagation in embryonated chicken eggs by Woodruff and Goodpasture.

1933

Identification of rabbit papillomavirus.

1936

Induction of carcinomas in other species by rabbit papillomavirus by Rous and Beard.

1948

1952

Poliovirus replication in cell culture by Enders, Weller, and Robbins.

Transduction by Zinder and Lederberg.

1954

Polio vaccine development by Salk.

1958

Bacteriophage lambda regulation paradigm by Pardee, Jacob, and Monod.

1963

Discovery of hepatitis B virus by Blumberg.

1970

Discovery of reverse transcriptase by Temin and Baltimore.

1976

Retroviral oncogenes discovered by Bishop and Varmus.

1977

RNA splicing discovered in adenovirus.

1983

Description of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as causative agent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) by Montagnier, Gallo)

1997

HAART treatment for AIDS.

2003

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused by a novel coronavirus.

2005

Hepatitis C virus propagation in tissue culture by Chisari, Rice, and Wakita.

2005

1918 influenza virus genome sequencing.