Richard Shope
Richard Edwin Shope (December 25, 1901 – October 2, 1966) was an American virologist who helped show that influenza is caused by a virus. He studied at the University of Iowa and did much of his work at the Rockefeller Institute in New Jersey.
In 1931, with his mentor Paul A. Lewis, he showed that swine flu was driven by a virus, not just a bacterium. This supported the idea that human influenza could also be viral. In 1933, Shope identified the Shope papilloma virus, which infects rabbits and is linked to warts and later cervical cancer research.
During the 1930s, researchers tied the 1918-19 pandemic to a viral cause. While others isolated the human influenza virus in 1933, Shope found that people who had lived through the 1918 outbreak still carried antibodies, showing prior exposure to the virus.
On farms in Iowa, Shope showed that viruses could cause diseases in animals, such as pseudorabies (mad itch) in cattle, and he documented fibroma and papillomatosis in rabbits. He became known as a leading “virus hunter.”
Shope left the Rockefeller Institute to join a Canada–US team studying rinderpest during World War II. He also served as a Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve. In 1943 he presented his team’s rinderpest findings at a George Merck–hosted meeting.
Awards and honors followed. He received the 1957 Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award and the Kober Medal, and he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He died on October 2, 1966, at age 64. His son Robert Shope also became a notable virologist, focusing on arthropod-borne viruses.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 04:13 (CET).