Nobel Nominee Spotlight: Gladys R.H. Dick, vaccinologist

by Heather Atkinson

Wishing a happy birthday to Gladys Rowena Henry Dick, part of our series on women who were nominated for Nobel Prizes in science but never won.

Nominated for her work on the Scarlet Fever Vaccine in 1925
b. December 18, 1881 d. August 21, 1963

In the early twentieth century, North America and Europe were plagued with the bacterial peril scarlet fever, which primarily targeted children and caused many such complications as skin infections, kidney disease, rheumatic fever and even resulted in mortality rates reaching up to an alarming 25 percent.  


After the loss of her son to scarlet fever, Edith Rockefeller McCormick and her husband established the John R. McCormick Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases in Chicago, which institution Gladys Henry Dick joined in 1914 and remained until her retirement in 1953, and where much of her research was completed, leading her to develop the skin test and vaccine that would be universally utilized to battle scarlet fever.

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