Herdis von Magnus

In 1956, Herdis von Magnus became head of department at the State Serum Institute in Copenhagen, and two years later she was named chief physician of its enterovirus department. From 1968 until 1980, she served as an expert advisor to the Danish National Board of Health, especially regarding epidemiology and vaccination issues.

In Denmark, a polio vaccination campaign began In April 1955, just ten days after the U.S. health authorities launched its nationwide inoculation effort. When the U.S. authorities had to pause its vaccination campaign because of a factory error, Herdis von Magnus insisted on continuing vaccine distribution in Denmark because she was confident that the serum created in her country had undergone a more thorough quality control process and was safe to use, and it was.

Virologist Jonas Salk published his pioneering work in the spring of 1953 announcing a new polio vaccine, which was inactivated with formalin. On learning of the breakthrough, "Herdis von Magnus and her husband, Preben von Magnus, went on a study stay in Salk's laboratory as early as 1953."

She rotated at Odense County and City Hospital and took various graduate positions at other hospitals in Copenhagen. Then she acquired a position as an assistant at the State Serum Institute in 1944 and started her own comprehensive study of encephalomyelitis in mice using a virus discovered by virologist Max Theiler in 1937.

Herdis von Magnus (23 September 1912 – 15 March 1992, Gentofte) was a Danish virologist and polio expert. After working with Jonas Salk, she and her husband directed the first polio vaccination program in Denmark. She also researched encephalitis.

Herdis von Magnus was born in Bogense, Denmark to teachers Hans Hansen (1888–1960) and Astrid Marie Nielsen-Rye (1885–1945). In 1931, she attended the Roskilde Cathedral School and in 1939 she graduated from the University of Copenhagen.