ABSTRACT
When, in 1966, the International Committee on Nomenclature of Viruses (ICNV) was established at the International Congress for Microbiology in Moscow, there was already a sense among vertebrate virologists that a universal taxonomic scheme was needed.' In fact, several individuals and groups had already been prompted by a rapidly growing mass of physicochemical data on many human and animal viruses to advance their own classification schemes. This overall history is detailed by Matthews in Chapter 1. The coming of age of vertebrate virology occurred logarithmically through the preceding 30 years starting with the first substantial studies of the nature of viruses in the 1930s. If one were to plot in some way efforts made to cluster viruses on the basis of similar pathogenic properties (e.g., "hepatitis viruses" to include hepatitis A virus, hepatitis B virus, yellow fever virus), organ tropisms (e.g., "respiratory viruses" to include influenza viruses, rhinoviruses, adenoviruses), or ecologic characteristics (e.g., "arboviruses" to include togaviruses, bunyaviruses, rhabdoviruses) against the date, the result would be a descending curve from a peak in the 1930s to a null point today. If, on the other hand, one were to plot efforts made to cluster viruses on the basis of similar virion physicochemical and structural properties, the result would be an ascending curve from a null point in the 1930s to a point of unanimity today. If one were to overlap these two hypothetical plots it would be clear that it was not until about 1950 that the two curves cross and the influence of biochemical and morphologic data could be seen as the wave of the future. From about this same time, that is 1950, there was also an explosion in the discovery of new viruses of man, and domestic and wild animals.
