Wolfgang Joklik

Wolfgang Karl "Bill" Joklik (November 16, 1926 – July 7, 2019) was a virologist and James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University, from which he retired in 1993 after 25 years chairing the department. In 1981, he founded the American Society for Virology, the first scientific society specifically for virologists, and served a two-year term as its founding president. In the same year, he was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences. He moved with his family to Sydney, Australia at age 11. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in biochemistry from Sydney University and received his Ph.D. in 1952 from the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University, where he worked on bacteriophage T1 and T2 (viruses that infect E. coli bacteria) under the supervision of Sir Paul Fildes. He spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow in Copenhagen working with Herman Kalckar and Paul Berg.

Smallpox eradication Joklik's research on vaccinia viruses led to his selection as one of two United States representatives to the World Health Organization's Smallpox Eradication Committee in the 1970s, whose efforts came to a close in 1980 when natural smallpox infections were declared to be eradicated and research stocks retained only by the United States Centers for Disease Control and the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in the then-Soviet Union. Joklik was a highly vocal opponent of efforts in the 1990s to destroy the remaining stocks, delivering talks and writing several papers on the topic. The Duke Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology (a successor to the department Joklik chaired) hosts an annual lectureship in his honor, the Joklik Distinguished Lectureship; the inaugural lecture was delivered in 2010 by fellow poxvirus specialist Bernard Moss. Joklik trained over 100 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; among his notable trainees are Bernard N. Fields and John Skehel. He died on July 7, 2019.