Background
Smadel was born in Vincennes, Indiana, the son of physician Joseph William Smadel and former nurse Clara Greene Smadel.
Smadel was born in Vincennes, Indiana, the son of physician Joseph William Smadel and former nurse Clara Greene Smadel.
He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania then obtained a medical degree from the Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis in 1931.
He introduced chloramphenicol as treatment for rickettsial diseases. Smadel then moved on to New York City to work under scientists Homer Swift and Thomas M. Rivers at the Rockefeller Institute. While there, Smadel took a strong interest in the new field of virology.
He formed a productive, long term professional association with Doctor Rivers, the two of them jointly publishing numerous articles
Utilizing the then new techniques of ultra-centrifugation and chemical fractionation, Smadel made significant contributions to the understanding of myxomatosis, viral encephalitis, variola, vaccinia, and psittacosis. Smadel joined the United States. Naval Reserve in December, 1940, but went on full-time active duty with the United States. Army’s Medical Department Professional Service School (MDPSS) in August, 1942.
(The MDPSS officially became the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in 1953 after a number of intermediate name changes.) The freshly commissioned Captain Smadel was assigned as Chief Virologist with the First Medical General Laboratory in the European Theater with the mission of controlling the outbreak of typhus fever in the Mediterranean region in May 1943. Following the Normandy invasion, he was assigned to an advanced field laboratory in France.
Following the Allied victory in Europe, Lieutenant Colonel Smadel became the Director of the Department Of Virus and Rickettsial Diseases with at the WRAIR, a position he held after his return to civilian life.
In the 1950s, under Smadel’s direction, WRAIR established itself as one of the première institutes for the study of infectious diseases. Research programs there included the study of leptospirosis, plague, hemorrhagic fever, arboviral diseases, enteric diseases, cholera, and rickettsial diseases such as typhus. In 1956 Smadel left the Institute to become the Associate Director of the National Institutes of Health.
In 1963, he assumed a new position as Chief, Laboratory of Virology and Rickettsiology, Division of Biologics Standards, National Institutes of Health, which he held until his death.
In Smadel was a member of the virological team that first recognized an outbreak of Saint Louis encephalitis in 1933.