Massachusetts ? Dr. Thomas H. Weller, the Harvard virologist who shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing techniques to grow the polio virus in the laboratory, a feat that laid the groundwork for the development of the polio vaccine and the feared virus’s near-eradication from the world, died in his sleep Saturday at his home in Needham, Mass. He was 93.

The techniques developed by Weller, Dr. John F. Enders and Dr. Frederick C. Robbins made it possible to grow a host of viruses in the laboratory and led to the development of many vaccines.

Weller also isolated the rubella (German measles) and herpes zoster viruses and demonstrated that the rubella virus and cytomegalovirus could be transmitted congenitally to fetuses, producing birth defects.

In the late 1940s, when Weller and Robbins were research fellows in Enders’ Harvard laboratory, viruses could not be seen with the tools available.