Who discovered the influenza vaccine?

Is there a reasonable possibility that some sort of proactive flu vaccine would be effective in preventing influenza's spread for an extended period of time with the goal that it will one day become eradicated like poxvirus?

• I should mention that I know vaccinations are given in conjunction such as the Measles Mumps and Rubella, (MMR) vaccine.  Is this something that could be done with attenuated flu vaccines in a proactive manner? That is, Engineering a attenuated influenza virion with mutated numerous HXNY surface glycoproteins to which the world has never seen. Potentially immunizing everyone to whatever new strains arise, and whether or not it works after 1 year is irrelevant since it seeks to, year after year, decrease Influenza's domain in the attempts to eradicate it just like the poxvirus. (Economics and monetary incentives aside) Although, long term productivity increases may be a good investment to upfront costs.

• Answer:

  Not likely.  The vast majority of flu viruses circulate in animals, especially wild waterfowl.  With the exception of the bat flu viruses, all the known mammalian flu viruses (human, swine, canine, equine, whale, etc)  are the result of avian flu viruses jumping into the mammalian species either directly, or through some other mammalian reservoir.   So even if we magically eradicated all human flu viruses, within a handful of years there would be a new flu pandemic as an avian, equine, swine, or canine virus jumped into humans.