Dr. Harry M. Meyer, Jr.

Harry M. Meyer, Jr., grew up in Palestine, Texas, attended Hendrix College, and then the University of Arkansas School of Medicine.

He worked as a researcher in the Army Medical Corps at Walter Reed Army Hospital after graduation. Dr. Meyer was recruited to the NIH to be head of the Virus Research Section in the Laboratory of Virology and Rickettsiology in the Division of Biologics Standards (DBS) in 1959 and moved into Building 29, third floor, when it opened in 1960.

Dr. Meyer worked on the Measles vaccine (add link) with Dr. John Enders of Harvard where they conducted trials in West Africa from 1961 to 1964.

Photo from National Library of Medicine

He became Chief of the Laboratory of Viral Immunology in DBS in 1964. Dr. Meyer moved to Building 29A after it opened in 1967, working on the second floor with the Laboratory of Viral Immunology.

Dr. Meyer worked with Dr. Parkman on the first Rubella vaccine beginning in 1964 and the new Rubella antibody test (patented in 1971).

With the administrative transition of the DBS from the NIH to the FDA in 1972, Dr. Meyer became the Director of what was then called the Bureau of Biologics. He stayed in this role from 1972 until he retired in 1986. When he retired, biologics was called the FDA Center for Drugs and Biologics; by 1988 it would become the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), which is the name it maintains to this day.