George Rusten

"I guess I was born with an interest in science…When I was a kid I used to de-wing flies to see what made them work.”

• —George W. 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.