Mosquito-borne diseases have a way of creating mass panic throughout the world. An outbreak of Zika, West Nile or malaria will get headlines as people do anything to avoid the insects.
Those epidemics make it so much more satisfying when we find a vaccine against of these diseases.
Yellow fever had that breakthrough in 1937.
The race for a vaccine started 50 years earlier, when Walter Reed confirmed that yellow fever is a mosquito-borne virus. In 1901, the U.S. Army physician proved that the insects, and not a bacteria, were responsible for yellow fever.