Paul Parkman, an inventor of the rubella vaccine, dies at 91 [Video]

Paul D. Parkman, a scientist who in the 1960s played a central role in identifying the rubella virus and developing a vaccine to combat it, breakthroughs that have eliminated from much of the world a disease that can cause catastrophic birth defects and fetal death, died May 7 at his home in Auburn, N.Y. He was 91.

He had cancer, said his niece Theresa Leonardi.

Dr. Parkman trained as a pediatrician but was drawn into virology while serving in the Army Medical Corps in the early 1960s. Stationed at Fort Dix in New Jersey, he grew bored with an assigned study on adenoviruses, run-of-the-mill germs that in most cases cause mild cold- and flu-like symptoms.

“A runny nose isn’t too much to look at,” Parkman recalled years later in an oral history, so he began passing his spare time in a ward that housed recruits suffering from rashes. Many of the young men, Parkman and his colleagues discovered, …