https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smallpox-eradication-champion-william-foege-dies-at-89/ Skip to main content Scientific American January 26, 2026 2 min read Google Logo Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89 A leader in the global fight against smallpox and a champion of vaccine science, William Foege died last Saturday By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron Three men hold a magazine with a cover that reads "smallpox is dead!" The late physicians and health administrators William Foege (middle), J. Donald Millar (left) and J. Michael Lane (right), all of whom served in the Global Smallpox Eradication Program, in 1980. CDC/Smith Collection/Gado/Contributor/Getty Join Our Community of Science Lovers! Sign Up for Our Free Daily Newsletter [ ]Enter your email [ ]I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific American and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy. We leverage third party services to both verify and deliver email. By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. Sign Up William Foege, a leader in the global fight to eliminate smallpox, has died. Foege passed away on Saturday at the age of 89, according to the Task Force for Global Health, a public health organization he co-founded. Foege headed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Smallpox Eradication Program in the 1970s. Before the disease was officially eradicated in 1980, it killed around one in three people who were infected. According to the CDC, there have been no new smallpox cases since 1977. "If you look at the simple metric of who has saved the most lives, he is right up there with the pantheon," said former CDC director Tom Frieden to the Associated Press. "Smallpox eradication has prevented hundreds of millions of deaths." --------------------------------------------------------------------- On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Foege went on to lead the CDC and served as a senior medical adviser and senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2012 then president Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Foege was a vocal proponent of vaccines for public health, writing with epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in Scientific American in 2013 that the effort to eliminate polio "has never been closer" to success. "By working together," they wrote, "we will soon relegate polio--alongside smallpox--to the history books." Polio remains a "candidate for eradication," according to the World Health Assembly. And in 2025 Foege, alongside several other former CDC directors, spoke out against the policies of the current secretary of health and human services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In a New York Times op-ed, they wrote that the top health official's tenure was "unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency." In a statement, Task Force for Global Health CEO Patrick O'Carroll remembered Foege as an "inspirational" figure, both for early-career public health workers and veterans of the field. "Whenever he spoke, his vision and compassion would reawaken the optimism that prompted us to choose this field, and re-energize our efforts to make this world a better place," O'Carroll said. Rights & Permissions Jackie Flynn Mogensen is a breaking news reporter at Scientific American. Before joining SciAm, she was a science reporter at Mother Jones, where she received a National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communications in 2024. Mogensen holds a master's degree in environmental communication and a bachelor's degree in earth sciences from Stanford University. She is based in New York City. More by Jackie Flynn Mogensen It's Time to Stand Up for Science If you enjoyed this article, I'd like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history. I've been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too. 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