Marguerite Vogt

Marguerite Vogt (13 February 1913 – 6 July 2007) was a cancer biologist and virologist. She was most noted for her research on polio and cancer at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Early life Vogt was born in Germany in 1913. The youngest daughter of Oskar Vogt and French-born Cécile Vogt-Mugnier, Vogt took her M.D. degree from the University of Berlin in 1937. Her parents were prominent neuroscientists and she grew up in an intense scientific environment. She published over 30 papers on the ring gland and homeotic mutants.

Vogt moved to the California Institute of Technology in 1950 to work with Max Delbrück. He introduced her to Renato Dulbecco, a junior faculty member in the division of biology and together, Vogt and Dulbecco worked on methods to culture poliovirus. They were the first to successfully grow the virus in vitro and were able to plaque purify it, an essential step for subsequent vaccine production. They next turned their attention to cancer-causing viruses, beginning with the polyoma virus. They were able to culture this virus and examine its latency, resulting in another classic study.

Dulbecco was recruited to the newly founded Salk Institute for Biological Studies in 1963, and Vogt joined him as a research fellow in his group.