From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2001:
Human obituaries
Charles Merieux, 94, died on January 20 in Lyon, France. Founder of the Institute Merieux, acquired by the Rhone-Poulenc drug empire in 1994, the virologist Merieux “had his first success working on an inoculation against foot-and-mouth disease, when he realized that the key was to grow it in a glass container rather than a live animal,” recalled New York Times obituarist Savannah Waring Walker. Merieux markedly improved the quality of vaccines and cut their cost, in monetary terms and in the animal lives needed to produce immunizing cultures. Among his innovations was the now standard human post-exposure rabies vaccine, developed with Hilary Koprowski, M.D. It replaced the vaccine invented by Louis Pasteur, which required 14 injections to the belly to deliver.
Don Richard Eckelberry, 79, died on January 14 from post-surgical respiratory failure. Born in Sebring, Ohio, Eckelberry formed a bird club in his early teens and wrote nature columns for two local newspapers. He met his wife of 54 years, fabric designer and painter Virginia Nepodal Eckelberry, when he took a class from her at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Making optical instruments in California during World War II, Eckelberry met National Audubon Society director John Baker, who in 1946 hired him to illustrate Richard Pough’s Audubon Bird Guide. Eckelberry later managed Audubon sanctuaries in Louisiana, Florida, and New Jersey, and in 1967 cofounded the Asa Wright Nature Center in Trinidad, but his main career for the rest of his life was painting birds for the Audubon magazine and 14 field guides.
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