Charles-Edward Amory Winslow

Life and work

The story behind the role.

American bacteriologist (1877-1957).

Charles-Edward Amory Winslow (February 4, 1877 – January 8, 1957) was an American bacteriologist and public health expert who was, according to the Encyclopedia of Public Health, "a seminal figure in public health, not only in his own country, the United States, but in the wider Western world." Winslow was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), obtaining a B.S. in 1898 and an M.S. in 1910. He began his career as a bacteriologist. He met Anne Fuller Rogers when they were students in William T. Sedgwick's laboratory at M.I.T., and married her in 1907. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while heading the sewage experiment station from 1908 to 1910, then taught at the College of the City of New York from 1910 to 1914. He was the youngest charter member of the Society of American Bacteriologists when that organization was founded in 1899. With Samuel Cate Prescott he published the first American textbook on the elements of water bacteriology. In 1915 he founded the Yale Department of Public Health within the Yale Medical School, and he was professor and chairman of the Department until he retired in 1945. (The Department became the Yale School of Public Health after accreditation was introduced in 1947.) During a time dominated by discoveries in bacteriology, he emphasized a broader perspective on causation, adopting a more holistic perspective. The department under his direction was a catalyst for health reform in Connecticut. He was the first director of Yale's J.B. Pierce Laboratory, serving from 1932 to 1957. Winslow was also instrumental in founding the Yale School of Nursing. He was the first Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Bacteriology, serving in that position from 1916 to 1944. He was also…

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