Jessie Isabelle Price

After her PhD, Price joined the Cornell Duck Research Laboratory, where she worked from 1959 to 1977,^[3] teaching at Long Island University, where she became an adjunct professor.^[6] She worked on developing a vaccine, undertaking trials of mixed flocks of vaccinated and unvaccinated ducklings, working every day, and conducting daily autopsies.^[3] In 1964, Ebony magazine featured Price and her work in an extensive photo-essay describing and showing her work on vaccine development, in the Duck Research Laboratory and on the farm.^[6] Price describes the heavy workload, made more onerous by the four-mile distance between the laboratory and farm where the flocks of ducklings were managed.^[6]

In 1966, Price was awarded a National Science Foundation travel grant to present her findings at the International Congress for Microbiology in Moscow.^[3] By 1974, she had developed an injectable vaccine and was moving on to studying oral vaccination.^[3] She moved to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin in 1977, and the study of environmental contaminants and diseases in wildlife, especially water fowl.^[3]

Her professional activities included serving as chair of the Predoctoral Minority Fellowship Ad Hoc Review Committee of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), as well as its Summer Research Fellowship and Travel Award Program. Price was also a member of the ASM's Committee on the Status of Minority Microbiologists and its Committee on the Status of Women Microbiologists. She was also active in Graduate Women in Science (also called Sigma Delta Epsilon), serving as national president from 1974 to 1975, after being national second vice-president (1972-1973), as well as on the national board of directors (1976-1980).^[3]

Price was a dog-lover and breeder, with a prize-winning Corgi in the 1960s.^[6] Her other favorite pastimes were photography, music, and travel.^[7]

Price died of Lewy body dementia on 12 November 2015 in Madison, and was buried in Quoque Cemetery on Long Island.^[7]

Long Island "New Duck Disease" is an infectious disease affecting primarily ducklings, with a high mortality rate.^[8] In 1956, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that it was "the most important disease problem of the duck industry", with losses of up to 75% of populations.^[9] For her doctoral work, Price isolated and reproduced Pasteurella anatipestifer, an essential step for vaccine development.^[2]

While at the Cornell Duck Research Laboratory, she began working on vaccine development for Pasteurella anatipestifer for white pekin ducks, which she would continue in avian cholera and TB for various species through her career.^[3] Some of the vaccines were commercially developed.^[3] She worked with national and international colleagues, publishing on Pasteurella anatipestifer in pheasants,^[10] medication for bacterial infections in ducklings,^[11] Pasteurella multocida in Nebraska wetlands^[12] and in snow geese.^[13][14]