American pathologist whose method (1931) for cultivating viruses and rickettsia in fertile chicken eggs made possible the production of vaccines for such diseases as smallpox, influenza, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and other illnesses caused by agents that can be propagated only in living tissue.

Goodpasture spent most of his career (1924–55) at the medical school of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.