Hultin’s quest to find victims of the 1918 flu was sparked in 1950 by an offhand remark over lunch with a University of Iowa microbiologist, William Hale. The virus, which was 25 times more deadly than ordinary flu viruses, killed tens of millions of people and infected 28 percent of Americans, dropping the average life span in the United States by 12 years.ĭr. Hultin’s discovery was crucial to finding the genetic sequence of the virus, allowing researchers to examine what made it so lethal and how to recognize it if it came again. The death was confirmed by his wife, Eileen Barbara Hultin.ĭr. Hultin, a pathologist whose discovery of victims of the 1918 flu pandemic buried in Alaskan permafrost led to a critical understanding about the virus that caused the outbreak, died on Saturday at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif.
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