Lives saved
Quantifying Jewish contributions to human progress, innovation, and the preservation of life
Lives Saved Through Innovation
Conservative estimates of lives saved or improved through Jewish medical and scientific breakthroughs
Estimated Total Impact
~2.8 Billion Lives
Jews are 26% of the people credited with history's greatest lifesaving advances — accounting for ~50% of the estimated 5.6 billion lives those advances have saved (ScienceHeroes.com, via jinfo.org): the Haber-Bosch fertilizer, blood transfusions, water chlorination, vaccines and more
See the twenty-seven people this figure counts →Contributor(s)
Jonas Salk & Albert Sabin
Measured impact
20+ million people able to walk
Wild poliovirus cases are down more than 99% since 1988 — from an estimated 350,000 a year across 125 countries to two endemic countries. More than 20 million people can walk today who would otherwise have been paralysed.
Source WHO, Poliomyelitis fact sheet
Contributor(s)
Selman Waksman
Measured impact
83 million lives saved since 2000
Streptomycin (1943) was the first drug able to cure tuberculosis. WHO credits global TB efforts with 83 million lives saved since 2000.
Source WHO, Tuberculosis fact sheet; Nobel Prize in Medicine 1952
Contributor(s)
Karl Landsteiner & Richard Lewisohn
Measured impact
~1.16 billion lives, credited equally to the two
Landsteiner identified the human blood groups in 1901; Lewisohn's sodium-citrate method made stored blood possible. Between them, modern surgery and trauma care.
Source ScienceHeroes.com, via jinfo.org
Contributor(s)
Paul Ehrlich
Measured impact
~14 million lives, from diphtheria and tetanus antitoxin
Ehrlich coined the word chemotherapy and made Salvarsan (1909), the first drug designed to strike a specific pathogen — the model every targeted drug has followed since.
Source ScienceHeroes.com, via jinfo.org; Nobel Prize in Medicine 1908
Contributor(s)
Casimir Funk & Alfred Sommer
Measured impact
~8.5 million lives, from vitamin A therapy
Funk named the vitamins in 1912 and set out the theory of deficiency disease; Sommer showed that vitamin A prevents childhood blindness and death.
Source ScienceHeroes.com, via jinfo.org; Britannica (Funk)
Contributor(s)
Benjamin Rubin & Aaron Ismach
Measured impact
~71 million lives, of the 142 million credited to eradication
Rubin's bifurcated needle and Ismach's jet injector made mass vaccination cheap and fast enough to finish the job. Smallpox is the only human disease ever eradicated: last natural case Somalia, 1977; declared eradicated 1980.
Source WHO, Smallpox; ScienceHeroes.com, via jinfo.org
Key life-saving discoveries that changed medicine forever
Blood Types (ABO System)
Karl Landsteiner
Enabled safe blood transfusions
Chemotherapy Concept
Paul Ehrlich
Nobel Prize - Founded modern pharmacology
Vitamins Identified
Casimir Funk
Prevented nutritional diseases
Streptomycin Discovery
Selman Waksman
First TB cure - Nobel Prize 1952
Polio Vaccine
Jonas Salk
Near-eradication of polio
Oral Polio Vaccine
Albert Sabin
Made global immunization possible
Estimation Approach: The ~2.8 billion figure is jinfo.org's pro-rata reading of ScienceHeroes.com: Jews are 26% of the ~105 principal developers of history's 43 greatest lifesaving advances, credited with ~50% of the ~5.6 billion lives those advances saved. Counting instead every advance where at least half the principal developers were Jewish yields ~4.3 billion (77%). Each card below carries its own source; where no source stated a figure, the card states what the source does say rather than an estimate of our own.
Key Sources: World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Nobel Prize Foundation, peer-reviewed medical journals, and historical epidemiological data.
Polio Data: WHO puts the 1988 baseline at an estimated 350,000 cases a year across more than 125 endemic countries; wild poliovirus is now down more than 99% and endemic in two.
TB Data: Streptomycin (1943) was the first drug able to cure tuberculosis. WHO credits global TB diagnosis and treatment with 83 million lives saved since 2000.
Blood Transfusions: Karl Landsteiner's discovery (1901) enabled modern surgery, emergency medicine, and saved countless lives in wars and accidents.
Data Sources: Nobel Prize Foundation, World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control, Wolf Foundation, International Mathematical Union, Lasker Foundation, Columbia University
Updated: December 2024 • Statistics compiled from verified sources • Learn about our methodology