March is Women's History Month and Immunize.org would like to recognize the contributions of women to vaccinology since its earliest days. In recent decades, many women have made major contributions to vaccine science and vaccination programs globally. You may be unfamiliar with some of these early trailblazers in the history of vaccinology 50 or more years ago, including:

• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced smallpox inoculation into Western medicine in 1721
• Anna Wessels Williams isolated the reference strain of diphtheria used to develop the first diphtheria antitoxin and later a diphtheria toxoid in the 1890s. She developed a quick test to diagnose rabies in 1902.
• Margaret Pittman recognized in 1931 that type b of Haemophilus influenzae was a major cause of disease
• Ida A. Bengtson developed the complement fixation test in the 1920s, which was used to standardize units of biological activity for botulinum, gas gangrene, and other antitoxins
• Pearl L. Kendrick and Grace Elderling researched pertussis in the 1940s, tested their vaccine first on themselves, and ran a successful clinical trial, resulting in the first vaccine against pertussis. Loney Clinton Gordon aided their efforts.
• Dorothy Horstmann showed that poliovirus reaches the brain through the blood in the 1940s
• Clara I. Nigg codeveloped botulinum toxoids in 1947
• Isabel M. Morgan and her team were the first to prove that inactivated viruses could produce immunity in the 1940s; her work led the development of Salk's polio vaccine in 1955
• Brigitte Alice Askonas's work on antibodies and T-cells in the 1950s informed research to improve vaccines
• Margaret G. Smith isolated cytomegalovirus (CMV) in 1956
• Ruth L. Kirshstein helped develop and refine tests to assure the safety of viral vaccines for such diseases as polio, measles, and rubella in the 1950s–1970s

• womenshistorymonth.gov website 
• Gavi: The Women Who Made Modern Vaccines Work (3/8/18)