Biography

Donald Henderson was born on September 7, 1928 in Lakewood, Ohio, USA. He was married to Nana Bragg. He died on August 19, 2016 in Towson, Maryland, USA.

He firmly argued that the remaining samples of smallpox virus (which are held under heavy security in the US and Siberia) should be destroyed because any amount of smallpox was too dangerous to tolerate.

He was an epidemiologist who led the international efforts to eradicate smallpox, which was finally accomplished in 1980. He shared credit with the many WHO collaborators who performed vaccinations in the field, often amid conditions of extreme poverty, political instability, and war.

He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Oberlin College in 1950 and a medical degree in 1954 from the University of Rochester in New York. In 1955, he joined the CDC, which was then called the Communicable Disease Center. He received a master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1960. At the CDC, he became chief of the virus surveillance section before leading the African, and then global, smallpox eradication campaigns.