Paul Parkman grew up in upstate New York. He attended Saint Lawrence University and State University of New York College of Medicine at Syracuse where he graduated first in his medical school class.

He then interned at Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, NY and completed residency at Upstate Medical Center.

Dr. Parkman entered the “doctors draft” in 1960 and was assigned as a Captain in the Army Medical Corps at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He and his colleagues isolated the Rubella virus from infected soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

He joined the NIH in 1963, working in the Laboratory of Viral Immunology in the Division of Biologics Standards (DBS). Dr. Parkman became Chief of the Section on General Virology in 1971.