George Rusten

• Started working at NIH in 1941 as an unskilled laborer.
• His first lab job was in 1943 in the glassware washing room of the Laboratory of Tropical Diseases.
• In 1948, Dr. Jane Taylor noticed his skill and took him on as a lab technician and taught him surgical procedures and other laboratory techniques.
• Rusten won an award for superior accomplishment in 1949 for creating three pieces of equipment that better facilitated his laboratory work.
• By 1961 he was a research technician supervising attenuated polio virus testing in monkeys in the Laboratory of Viral Immunology in the Division of Biologics Standards, working with Dr. Ruth Kirschstein.
• Kirschstein mentored Rusten and fought for his promotion to a GS-11 rank.
• Rusten had always had an interest in science and what began as a temporary job as an unskilled laborer led to a lifelong career in the laboratory.
• Worked in Building 29, Rooms 209, 512, and 516.