9.4: Scientist Spotlight - Jessie Isabelle Price

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In November 2021, Oxford University Press (OUP) made headlines when the company announced its 2021 Word of the Year - Vax. Given the coronavirus pandemic, words like “vax” and “vaccine” have dominated our language and everyday lives, so this comes as no surprise. In a report on the language of vaccines, OUP states that the origin of “vaccine” relates to the pioneering work of 18th century British physician Edward Jenner. Vacca is the Latin word for cow, and through his work with inoculation, “Jenner conceived the Latin expression variolae vaccinae as a name for cowpox” (OUP 2021). At first, the word “vaccine” only described inoculation against cowpox, but its usage was expanded to include multiple variations of the word in reference to immunization against other diseases. But surely, one Englishman could not be the end-all-be-all, sole champion of vaccination? Cue Jessie Isabelle Price.

Born in Montrose, Pennsylvania in 1930, Price was raised by a single mother and attended predominantly white public schools. After graduating from high school and being accepted into Cornell, she deferred for a year to prepare herself academically (Gillmer 2018). Price wanted to become a physician, but could not afford additional costs that the program required. Instead, she graduated with a Bachelors of Science in microbiology in 1953 and by 1959, Price had earned a Masters and PhD in bacteriology, pathology, and parasitology. Work from her dissertation, in which she studied Pasteurella anatipestifer infection in Pekin ducklings, was published in the journal Avian Diseases. Following her graduate studies, Price remained at Cornell as a research scientist focusing on “the identification and control of bacterial diseases in commercial white Pekin Ducklings.” (Gillmer 2018)

Although her career stretched beyond her time at the Cornell Duck Disease Research Laboratory, some of her most impactful work originated from her time there. For example, farmers internationally were losing ducklings due to respiratory disease, and Price discovered that they were dying of duck hepatitis, Pasteurella multocida, and Escherichia coli (Warren 1999). Not only did she uncover the source of this avian mortality, Price developed two vaccines that saved the poultry industry money, but more importantly prevented potential disease outbreaks in other bird species. Despite this monumental achievement, if asked about the history of vaccines, Jenner (or Fauci) is typically the only name that comes to mind.

An old photo shows three white men and one black woman behind a sign reading “Cornell University Duck Research Laboratory, NY state Veterinary College, LI Duck Research Coop., NY State College of Agric.”

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): “Cornell University’s Duck Research Laboratory” provided by Cornell University is licensed under CC0 1.0.

References

“Doctor to Long Island Ducks.” Ebony Magazine. (September 1964). pp. 76-82. <https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JaT6tBKGK3sC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA76#v=onepage&q&f=false>. Accessed December 28, 2021.

Gilllmer, Sophia. (2018). Jessie Isabelle Price (1930-2015). BlackPast. <https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/price-jessie-isabelle-1930-2015/>. Accessed November 9, 2021.

Oxford University Press. (2021). Word of the Year 2021: Vax. <https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2021/>. Accessed December 28, 2021.

Warren, Wini. (1999). Jessie Isabelle Price. Black Women Scientists in the United States. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, pp. 237-243.