Virology Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Virology, including details on viruses, pathology, classification, definitions.

How the American Society for Virology was founded.

Joklik WK, Grossberg SE

Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710, USA.

The American Society for Virology, the very first such Society to be formed anywhere, was founded at a meeting of some 40 virologists at Chicago O'Hare International airport on June 9, 1981. They met after a decade and a half of intense discussion that originated at the 9th International Congress of Microbiology in Moscow in 1966 when a small group of virologists requested the International Association of Microbiological Societies to form a Virology Section within IAMS, and this request was rejected. Virologists therefore held their own First International Congress of Virology in Helsinki in 1968 which was very successful and generated intense informal discussion among leading virologists in this country as to the desirability of founding an American society for virologists. Proposals were circulated and discussed which resulted in the informal Chicago meeting that created the mechanism for founding the ASV and organizing its 1st Annual Meeting at Cornell in Ithaca in August 1982.

Published 20 December 2005 in Virology, 344(1): 250-7.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2005-2008 Virology Research Today. All Rights Reserved.