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Lee D. Cady was a physician who served on the Washington University and Baylor University Schools of Medicine staff, and served overseas for the U.S. in both WWI and WWII. Cady graduated from University of Missouri (A.B. 1918) and Washington University School of Medicine (A.M. 1921; M.D. 1922), and was a faculty member at Washington University (Departments of Medicine and Clinical Medicine) from 1925 to 1942. He did his internship and residency at Washington University, 1922-1925. During WWII, he was the commander of the 21st General Hospital, the hospital unit for Washington University in Rouen, France. Under his leadership, the base hospital cared for over 65,000 patients in the European theater of the war. For his medical service and assistance in the liberation of France, Cady received the French Croix de Guerre in 1945. The next year, he was appointed the director of medical services for the Veterans Administration in Dallas, presiding over the regional branches in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Cady served in that position for thirteen years and later was appointed as the director of the Veterans Hospital in Houston. He passed away in 1987 and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

In 1950 Irene W. (Mrs. Oscar) Johnson donated $235,000 to Washington University for the establishment of a medical rehabilitation facility as a unit of the McMillan Hospital. In October 1959 the Irene Walter Johnson Institute of Rehabilitation opened at 509 S. Euclid Avenue, between the McMillan Hospital and the Washington University Clinics. Services of the Institute were coordinated through the Washington University School of Medicine’s Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health.
Source: Women in the Health Sciences http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/mowihsp/win/Timeline/IWJInstitute.htm

Aaron Steele (1835-1917) was a prominent figure from the early years of the field of orthopedic surgery. Born in Rochester, New York, on November 20, 1835, Steele attended local schools for his baccalaureate education before earning his MD in 1859 from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He became a demonstrator of anatomy at Buffalo Medical College and then served as a surgeon in the Union Army for the extent of the Civil War. In 1867, Steele moved to St. Louis and decided to devote himself entirely to orthopedic surgery, becoming one of the first physicians in the West to limit his practice to this burgeoning field. Steele joined the faculty of Beaumont Medical College – and later Missouri Medical College – as a professor of orthopedic surgery. When the Missouri Medical College merged with the St. Louis Medical College to form the Medical Department of Washington University in 1899, Steele became chair of the Orthopedics Department, a position he retained until 1910.

Steele was also a charter member of the American Orthopedic Association, serving as its president in 1893 and chair of its membership committee from 1895 until 1910. After the death of his two-year-old son and wife, Steele became particularly interested in the treatment of children with physical disabilities. In 1884, his dream of a children’s hospital was realized with the opening of the Augusta Free Children’s Hospital. Space constraints necessitated the sponsorship of a new benefactor and consequently the hospital was renamed the Martha Parsons Free Hospital in 1890. This facility then merged with St. Louis Children’s Hospital in 1910. Steele became bedridden in his advanced age and died in St. Louis on January 7, 1917.

Nathaniel Harrington Cowdry was a Banker and Botanist born in Torrington Devon, England. He married Anna Leaycraft Ingham (1852–1890) on 9 Jun 1887 in Paget, Bermuda. Their son Edmund Vincent Cowdry was born on 18 Jul 1888 in Fort MacLeod, Willow Creek, Alberta, Canada, Anna died two years later in Bermuda. For more information on the family bank in Fort MacLeod see Cowdry Family fonds finding aid, Glenbow Museum, accessed December 1, 2017 ǂb finding aid (born 1849, moved to Canada, founded a bank, died 1925) http://www.glenbow.org/collections/search/findingAids/archhtm/cowdry.cfm

Sources: https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/family-tree/person/tree/166044816/person/122153938536/facts?ssrc=&queryId=07d6d52f0af8691205d31cf094286d83&ml_rpos=2

Wendell Scott (1905-1972) contributed much to the fields of radiology and cancer research. Born on July 19, 1905, in Boulder, Colorado, Scott earned his BA from the University of Colorado in 1928. In 1932, he attained his MD from Washington University School of Medicine. Scott completed his internship at Barnes Hospital between 1933 and 1934 and then became an instructor at Washington University School of Medicine, advancing to a full professor of clinical radiology in 1956. Throughout his career, Scott was associated with Washington University's Department of Radiology (known as the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology). At the Mallinckrodt Institute, he helped develop radiographic kymography and rapid film changers for diagnostic radiographic use. He constructed a kymograph to determine its practical, clinical value in examining the heart, chest, and abdomen.

Scott also served in the U.S. Naval Reserve, eventually rising to the rank of rear admiral. He joined the Naval Reserve in 1936 and served on active duty between 1941 and 1946. He continued to serve the Naval Reserve as a Consultant in Radiology to the Surgeon General of the Navy and was promoted to the rank of rear admiral in 1959. In 1970, President Nixon commissioned Scott for the National Cancer Advisory Board, whose recommendations spurred the enactment of the National Cancer Act of 1971. Scott was a member of a number of radiological and cancer organizations. He served as president of the American Cancer Society from 1963 to 1964 and also headed the American Roentgen Ray Society from 1958 to 1957.

The author of over 150 scientific articles, Scott also served as editor-in-chief of Your Radiologist and editor of Planning Guide for Radiological Installations, Cancer, and Genetics, Radiobiology, and Radiology. Scott received numerous awards and accolades for his contributions to the medical field, including the Gold Medal of the St. Louis Medical Society, the President’s Medal of the American Roetgen Ray Society, the Gold Medal of the American College of Radiology, the National Award of the American Cancer Society, and distinguished alumni awards from the University of Colorado and Washington University. Scott succumbed to the very disease he devoted his life to studying, dying of kidney cancer on May 4, 1972, in St. Louis.

Ben Senturia (1910-1982) was an otolaryngologist who began his practice in St. Louis in 1939. Senturia was educated at Washington University earning his A.B. in 1931 and his M.D. in 1935. After an internship at the St. Louis City Hospital and an additional internship and residency in otolaryngology at the McMillan-Barnes Hospital, Dr. Senturia joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in 1938. He also worked with closely with Max Goldstein and Dr. Richard Silverman at the Central Institute for the Deaf. His World War II service was with the U.S. Air Force in the research section of the School of Aviation Medicine where he conducted major investigation in noise induced hearing loss and in the infections of the external ear.

After the war, Senturia taught medical students and graduate students and conducted major research programs in otolaryngology. His clinical and basic research in external otitis resulted in two textbooks and over 80 scientific papers. In 1952, he became director of the department of otolaryngology at the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis. He was also president of the American Otological Society from 1972-1973. Arthur Proetz appointed him associate editor of the Annals of Otology, Rhinology, and Laryngology in 1958 and he became its editor in 1966.

Howard Gest received his B.A. in Bacteriology from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1942. During his undergraduate studies, he worked with Salvador E. Luria and Max Delbruck (who along with Alfred D. Hershey won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969 for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses) doing research on bacterial viruses at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Gest began graduate work with Delbruck at Vanderbilt University, but World War II interrupted his studies. At that point he accepted a position to work on the Manhattan Project with the eminent physical chemist Charles Coryell at the University of Chicago, and later at Oak Ridge, TN.

In 1946, Gest became Martin Kamen’s first graduate student at Washington University. Martin Kamen was a professor in Biochemistry at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine. During Gest’s graduate work with Kamen, he became associated with Alfred Hershey in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at the School of Medicine. Gest received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from Washington University in 1949.

Gest was a faculty member at Western Reserve University School of Medicine from 1949 to 1959. Gest returned to Washington University as a faculty member in 1959. He was also a member of the Interdepartmental Committee on Molecular Biology. He remained a professor until 1966 when he joined the faculty at Indiana University, Bloomington. As of 2006, he served as Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science.

Professor, and Professor Emeritus of Microbiology, Indiana University; studied bacterial photosynthesis; died April 24, 2012, Bloomington, Indiana)
Howard Gest Papers (WUA00074), 1936-2011 WUA/04/wua00074 URL: http://archon.wulib.wustl.edu/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=370

Sherwood Moore was the first professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine and among the earliest to hold such a position in the nation. A native of Lynchburg, Virginia, Moore studied for a year at the University of Virginia before transferring to Washington University. Moore received his MD from the Washington University Medical Department in 1905. He was an intern at St. Louis city Hospital (1905-1906), and a resident in obstetrics at Washington University Hospital (1906-1907). After several years of practice in St. Louis and a year in Africa (1914), Moore decided to specialize in radiology. He received additional training in x-ray techniques in Richmond and in Boston. In 1917, Moore returned to Washington University as assistant in surgery and roentgenologist to Barnes Hospital. He was promoted to full professor in 1927.

With the founding of the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology in 1930, Moore was named its first director, continuing in that capacity as chief roentgenologist to all the hospitals affiliated with Washington University. He made vital contributions in those years to research led by Evarts A. Graham in the diagnosis and surgical treatment of diseases of the chest and digestive tract. He was a distinguished member of numerous professional societies in this country and abroad.

Charles O. Curtman was born Karl Otto Curtman in Giessen, Germany and was a medical graduate of the university in his native city, where he was a student of Justus von Liebig. After working in Antwerp, Belgium as an industrial chemist, he emigrated to the United States and settled in New Orleans in 1850. When the Civil War began he was commissioned as a medical officer in a Confederate cavalry unit, but soon thereafter was assigned to direct the manufacture of medicines and explosives at army laboratories. After the war he practiced medicine in Memphis and from there was recruited to join the faculty of Missouri Medical College in St. Louis. He was Professor of Chemistry at the College from 1868 until 1874 and again from 1883 until his death.

Curtman also taught at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy (the two colleges maintained an informal affiliation) and was on the staff of the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in the city. Too early to be considered a "biochemist," he was nonetheless a significant local pioneer in investigating and teaching laboratory science to medical and pharmacy students. He was the author of three laboratory manuals and numerous journal reviews of current scientific developments. At the very end of his life, he was among the first in St. Louis to investigate applications for the newly discovered principles of x-ray technology.

Evarts Ambrose Graham was born in 1883 and raised in Chicago where his father was Professor of Surgery at Rush Medical College and a surgeon on the staff of Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Graham's academic training included a liberal arts degree from Princeton University, an M.D. from Rush Medical College, an internship at Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago, a fellowship in pathology at Rush Medical College, and two years of study as a part-time student in chemistry at the University of Chicago. In 1916, Graham married Helen Tredway, a graduate student in chemistry at the University of Chicago, and for two years the couple lived in Mason City, Iowa, where he was a surgeon in a private clinic.

During World War I Graham was commissioned to serve as a captain in the Army Medical Corps, where, because of his broad background in medicine, surgery, and chemistry, he was appointed to the Empyema Commission. The specific task of this commission was to investigate pleural cavity abscesses called empyema, a form of post-influenza disease which, in some camps, was killing as many am 90 percent of the soldiers who suffered from it. Graham contended that the chief cause of death from empyema was not the disease itself, but too early surgical intervention. He advised that the drainage of the abscesses be delayed until after the pneumonia had subsided, and the Surgeon General permitted Graham to treat a group of empyema patients at Camp Lee, Virginia, in accordance with this principle. Among the group of patients so treated, the mortality rate quickly dropped to about four percent. The reputation thus gained later won Graham an appointment as Professor of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in 1919.

As Bixby Professor of Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief of the Barnes and St. Louis Children's Hospitals from 1919 to 1951, Graham brought international fame to the Washington University School of Medicine. His medical achievements included the development of cholecystograpy (the x-ray visualization of the biliary tract), the first successful total pneumonectomy (the removal of an entire lung), and the experimental production of skin cancer in mice by the application of cigarette tars obtained from an automatic smoking machine.

Between 1925 and 1954, Graham served on various medical committees of the National Research Council. He also serve on on a number of Government committees including the Committee to Study the Medical Department of the Army (1942), the President's Committee to Study the Health Needs of the Nation (1952), and the Medical Task Force of the Second Hoover Commission (1953-1954). Additionally, Dr. Graham was president of various surgical and medical associations including the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (1928), the American Surgical Association (1937), the American College of Surgeons (1940-1941), the Interstate Post-graduate Medical Association of North America (1948), and the XVI Congress of the International Society of Surgery (1955). He also edited the Yearbook of General Surgery (1926-1957) and served as a member of the editorial and advisory boards of the Archives of Surgery (1920-1945) and the Annals of Surgery (1935-1957).

As a full-time professor of surgery, Graham was able to fulfill a long standing ambition to practice surgery, to engage in medical research, and to train young doctors. He trained outstanding physicians, and his students came to hold top hospital and teaching positions the world over. Such prominent surgeons as Warren H. Cole, Nathan A. Womack, Brian Blades, Thomas H. Burford, and many others are tributes to Graham's ability as a teacher. Upon his retirement in 1951, Graham became Bixby Professor Emeritus of Surgery at Washington University. He died in 1957.

The interests and achievements of Edmund Vincent Cowdry (1888-1975) combined several careers in one. He was born in Alberta province, Canada, and grew up in Ontario. He studied at the University of Toronto, receiving his BA in 1909. Continuing with graduate training in anatomy, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1913. He was on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University from 1913 to 1917. From 1917 to 1921, he was among the first professors at Peking Union Medical College, established by the Rockefeller Foundation in Beijing, China. From 1921 until 1928, Cowdry was an associate member of the Rockefeller Institute, the medical research center in Manhattan that is now known as Rockefeller University. Beginning with that period, he made several research trips to African countries. In South Africa, he was instrumental in isolating the organism (thereafter called Cowdria ruminantium) which causes heartwater in animals. In Tunisia, he investigated the etiology of malaria. In Kenya, his chief interest was yellow fever.

E.V. Cowdry joined Washington University School of Medicine in 1928 as head of the Cytology program and co-chair of the Department of Anatomy, and for that purpose moved to St. Louis. The city became his and his family's home for the remainder of his life, although he continued his earlier pattern of extended leaves and foreign travel. He became a United States citizen in 1930. Later he became director of research at Barnard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital (1939), then an independent hospital, but which he guided toward eventual integration with Washington University School of Medicine. In 1941 he became the formal head of the Department of Anatomy (1941). Cowdry's chief laboratory research interests in those years came to focus on cancer. He was noted not only for work in the laboratory, but also for his advocacy of increased public support for programs to fight malignant diseases. He was also widely known for coordinating interdisciplinary work in gerontology and is considered today to be one of the founders of contemporary scientific approaches in that branch of applied medicine and social work. E.V. Cowdry stepped down as head of anatomy in 1950, accepting in its place the position of director of the Wernse Cancer Research Laboratory at the school. He was named professor emeritus and director emeritus of the Wernse laboratory in 1960. Cowdry remained active in research in the university and at Jewish Hospital of St. Louis until his death in 1975.

The American College of Surgeons (ACS) is a scientific and educational association of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to improve the quality of care for the surgical patient by setting high standards for surgical education and practice. Source: https://www.facs.org/about-acs/archives/acshistory

Borden Veeder was instrumental in developing the Department of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine. Born in Fonda, New York, on August 21, 1883, Veeder attended Colgate Academy and College in Hamilton, New York. He earned his MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907 and studied in Berlin for a year before returning to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, where he served as a demonstrator in pathology. In 1911, Veeder moved to St. Louis to assist John Howland in fostering Washington University's Pediatrics Department. During World War I, Veeder commanded Base Hospital Unit No. 21 in Rouen, France, an American military hospital administrated largely by Washington University medical personnel. Veeder remained at Washington University School of Medicine throughout his career, attaining emeritus status in 1952.

In addition to his duties on behalf of Washington University, Veeder also contributed greatly to the pediatrics field. He was a member of the American Pediatrics Society (president, 1934), American Board of Pediatrics (president, 1933-1941), American Academy of Pediatrics (president, 1943), and the National Board of Medical Examiners (president, 1947-1949). Veeder also fomented the publication of a national academic journal in the field of pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics, for which he served as editor from 1932 until 1958. Veeder's own publications include Preventive Pediatrics and The Adolescent: His Conflicts and Escapes (with Sidney I. Schwab).

During his career in St. Louis, Veeder maintained a private practice while also serving as a consulting physician to St. Louis Children's Hospital, in addition to his responsibilities to the Pediatrics Department at Washington University School of Medicine. He was also active in the St. Louis chapter of the American Red Cross, serving as chapter chairman from 1942 until 1945. Veeder passed away on June 24, 1970.

Robert James Terry was born in St. Louis, Missouri on January 24, 1871. He finished his pre-medical education at Cornell University in New York in 1892. Terry was accepted into the class of 1895 at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. However, after one year of study, financial troubles forced him to leave Columbia University. He returned to St. Louis and completed his medical education at Missouri Medical College, graduating cum laude in 1895. Following graduation, he established a private practice in St. Louis and was appointed as Assistant Director in Anatomy at Missouri Medical College.

In 1897, Terry married Grace Valle Speck. Soon after the wedding, the Terry's moved to Scotland for a year where Dr. Terry studied at Edinburgh University. Upon his return to St. Louis, Terry was promoted to Lecturer at Missouri Medical College. He held this position until 1899, when Missouri Medical College merged with the Medical Department of Washington University. With the 1899 merger came a promotion to Assistant Professor in Anatomy. The following year Terry was promoted again to Full Professor and Head of the Department of Anatomy. Terry would maintain his full professorship for 41 years until his retirement in 1941.

In 1903, Dr. Terry and his family traveled to Freiberg, Germany where he took up the study of anatomy at the University of Freiberg under the instruction of Professors Gaupp, Keibel, and Widersheim. In 1906, he was named an Austin Teaching Fellow in Histology and Embryology at Harvard University. He returned to St. Louis in 1907 and continued in his role as Professor and Head of the Department of Anatomy at Washington University. Three years later in 1910, the medical school underwent a major reorganization and all department heads were asked to step down. Upon the completion of the reorganization, Terry was the only full time department head asked to remain in his previous position.

During the First World War, Terry acted as the dean of the Officers School of Oral and Plastic Surgery in St. Louis. In 1921, he was awarded with the honorary title of Anthropologist from Barnes Hospital. He maintained the title of Anthropologist Emeritus until his death. In 1956, he was awarded an honorary doctor of law degree from Washington University. Dr. Terry retired from active teaching in 1941 but remained an active researcher until 1958.

During his tenure at Washington University, Terry initiated and assembled one of the largest skeletal research collections in the United States. Beginning in 1924, he started to gather and preserve skeletons from some of the cadavers used in the medical school anatomy courses. As his collection grew, he became more particular about the skeletons chosen, often identifying them prior to dissection and marking them for soft tissue dissection only, a precaution taken in order to preserve the bones. After the dissections, Terry would prepare the skeletons, removing all but a small amount of fat. He believed that the remaining fat would help to ensure better preservation of the bones, a fact proven true by the continuous good condition of the collection. Following Dr. Terry's retirement from teaching in 1941, care and preservation of the collection was given over to Mildred Trotter. Dr. Trotter continued to enlarge the collection until 1964, when it was indefinitely loaned to the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution.

In addition to his work at Washington University and his dedication to anatomical education, Terry was also an active member of a number of local and national organizations. He was a founding member of both the American Journal of Anatomy and the American Association of Physical Anthropology, an organization for which he later served as President and Associate Editor of the affiliated journal. Terry also served as president of the St. Louis Academy of Science and the editor of the Washington University Medical Alumni Quarterly. He was also very active in naturalist circles, founding organizations such as the St. Louis Naturalist Club in 1898 and the St. Louis Bird Club in 1901. He also collaborated in the establishment of a migratory bird treaty between the United States and Great Britain and assisted in the founding of the St. Louis Bird Sanctuary. Due to his dedication and passion for nature, Terry was recognized by the City of St. Louis in 1959, when a park at the corner of Eads and Compton was named for him. Dr. Terry remained an active member of both the medical and naturalist communities until his death in 1966.

Virginia Minnich was born January 24, 1910, in Zanesville, Ohio. She graduated with a bachelor's degree from Ohio State University in 1937 and earned a master's degree from Iowa State College in 1938. Minnich's expertise was in hematology and nutrition. She studied iron metabolism, platelet function, abnormal hemoglobins, thalassemia and morphology/hematology. Her work led to the discovery of hemoglobin E and the elucidation of the glutathionine synthesis pathway. She also created wide-ranging audiovisual programs on all aspects of blood and bone marrow, which have been used worldwide.

Minnich spent her entire medical career at Washington University School of Medicine, starting as a hematology research assistant in 1939. In 1958, she was promoted to research associate. She was elevated to full professor in 1974. Minnich spent 1964-65 in Turkey on a Fulbright Award. She was a member of the Foundation for Clinical Research, the American Society of Hematology and the International Society of Hematology.

Leo Loeb was born in Mayen, Germany on September 21, 1869 and studied at the Universities of Heidelberg, Berlin, Basle, and Freiburg. He received his medical degree from the University of Zurich in 1897. Upon graduation he moved to Chicago, Illinois at the age of 27 and briefly established a private practice. After only 10 months of working as a private practitioner, he decided to devote more of his time to research, so he joined the Department of Pathology at the University of Illinois. In 1904, Dr. Loeb accepted a position at the University of Pennsylvania as Professor of Experimental Pathology.

Dr. Loeb moved to Saint Louis in 1910 to become the Director of the Department of Pathology at the Barnard Skin and Cancer Hospital. His long association with the Washington University School of Medicine began in 1915, when he became Professor of Comparative Pathology. Following the resignation of Eugene Opie, he became Professor of Pathology and head of the department in 1924.

Dr. Loeb was a charter member of the American Association for Cancer Research and served as president of that association in 1911. Among the many honors he received throughout his career was his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1937. Dr. Loeb retired as emeritus Professor of Pathology that year, but even at the age of 72, he and continued his experimental investigations and focused a majority of his time writing. His book titled The Biological Basis of Individuality was published in 1945, and at the time of his death in 1959, Loeb was working on two additional books. One is on mental processes and titled Psychical Goods or The Imponderables. The other unfinished book is concerned with the causes and nature of cancer.

His autobiography in Ingles' A dozen doctors (1963) gives fascinating details of his life in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States.

Vilray Papin Blair is most known for his pioneering work in plastic surgery. A native of St. Louis, Blair graduated from Christian Brothers College in 1890 and subsequently enrolled in the St. Louis Medical College. There he was greatly influenced by Elisha Hall Gregory, a professor of surgery. He graduated in 1893 and began an internship at Mullanphy Hospital under distinguished surgeon Paul Yoer Tupper.

In 1894 Blair was appointed instructor with the Anatomy Department of St. Louis Medical College (which had joined Washington University in 1891). In 1896 he took a leave from medicine to join the crew of a merchant vessel bound for Europe, a decision that led to him becoming a ship surgeon for a journey to Brazil and then a military surgeon for British troops sailing to West Africa.

Upon his return to St. Louis in 1900, Blair established a private surgical practice and resumed teaching at the School of Medicine. He was named to the visiting staff of St. Louis City Hospital in 1910. In 1917 Blair joined the U.S. Army Corps entering World War I and was named chief of oral and plastic surgery. On his return to St. Louis he was active in the Medical Reserve Corps and served as attending specialist in plastic surgery at the Jefferson Barracks Veterans Hospital.

Blair served as assistant professor of clinical surgery at the School of Medicine in 1922 and was named professor in 1927. He also served as professor of oral surgery at the Washington University School of Dentistry. He became an emeritus professor of both schools in 1941. Throughout his career, Blair published many influential books and articles in the areas of plastic and oral surgery. Another foremost achievement was his leadership in creating the American Board of Plastic Surgery, which helped seal his place as a pioneer in establishing plastic surgery as a unique branch of medicine.

Hallowell Davis was born in New York City on August 31, 1896. He studied at Harvard University, receiving a B.A. there in 1918 and an M.D. in 1922. Davis's interest in electrophysiology developed while doing post-graduate research in England under Lord Adrian. In 1923, Hallowell Davis joined the Department of Physiology at the Harvard Medical School. His research concentrated on the electrophysiology of nerves. He became associated with the informal group of scientists known as "axonologists," which also included Joseph Erlanger, Herbert Gasser, and others of WUSM. In the 1930s Davis began concentrating on problems relating to hearing, but was also active in research on electrical activity in the brain. He contributed to the development of one of the first ink-writing electroencephalographs. During World War II he did vital war-related research on human tolerance to loud sounds and on the development of hearing aids.

Hearing aid research brought Davis into frequent contact with Central Institute for the Deaf, which was a subcontractor to a Harvard project. In 1946 he accepted an offer to establish a Research Department at CID and also to join the WUSM Departments of Physiology and Otolaryngology.

Among his first major projects in St. Louis was measurement of effectiveness of fenestration operations pioneered by Theodore Walsh. Davis's use of speech in these hearing tests was the beginning of speech audiometry. He became a leading figure in the development of the first American standards for audiometers and the adoption of the international zero reference level as part of that standard. He continued research under several contracts with the U.S. Armed Forces, contributing to work in ultrasonics, mechanical shock, and other areas. In the 1960s he was a member of the National Research Council's Committee on SST (super-sonic transport) and Sonic Boom.

Hallowell Davis retired officially in 1965, but remained active as CID Director of Research Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Otolaryngology. In 1976 he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Gerald R. Ford. Davis died in 1992.