Hilary Koprowski was an iconoclastic, Polish-born physician and former Director of the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Included among Koprowski’s many accomplishments were his seminal contributions on rabies. In this narrative, Dr. Stanley Plotkin, a newly graduated pediatrician in the 1950s with a primary interest in polio, offers a narrative on the man, the disease, and his involvement in the historical development of the first cell culture rabies vaccine for use in humans.