Stanley Plotkin

Who is Stanley Plotkin?

Stanley Plotkin is an American physician who works as an adviser at pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur. In the 1960s, he played a pivotal role in discovery of a vaccine against rubella virus while working at Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Plotkin was a member of Wistar’s active research faculty from 1960 to 1991. Today, in addition to his emeritus appointment at Wistar, he is emeritus professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. His book, "Vaccines", is the standard reference. He is an editor with Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, which is published by the American Society of Microbiology in Washington, DC.

Plotkin has developed many vaccines, including the rubella vaccine, RA27/3 strain, developed during his time at Wistar and now exclusively used in the United States and throughout the world. He also developed experimental vaccines against cytomegalovirus, polio, and varicella and collaborated with former Wistar scientists Hilary Koprowski and Tadeusz Wiktor on a vaccine against rabies and with H. Fred Clark and Paul Offit on another against rotavirus.

Over the course of his career he has served as senior assistant surgeon with the Epidemic Intelligence Service, United States Public Health Service; director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; associate chairman of the Department of Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania; and medical and scientific director of Aventis Pasteur.