Simeon Burt Wolbach

Simeon Burt Wolbach was born in 1880 in Grand Island, Nebraska, and grew up on the western plains. He attended Harvard Medical School (M.D., 1903), studying pathology under Councilman and Mallory. After medical school, he worked as director of the Bender Hygienic Laboratory in Albany, NY; pathologist at the Montreal General Hospital and teacher at McGill Medical School. In 1910, he returned to Harvard as an assitant professor of bacteriology. He was promoted to associate professor in 1914. In 1916, he was jointly appointed to the Departments of Bacteriology and Pathology. In 1917, he was pathologist to the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Boston Lying-In Hospital. In 1922, he was appointed the Shattuck professor of pathology at Harvard. He held this position for 25 years. In 1947, he became the director of the Division of Nutritional Research at Children's Hospital in Boston. He held this position until his death in 1954.

Wolbach's interests ranged from the effects of radiation to tropical medicine and infectious diseases. His work on radiation began with Porter in 1907. Later in life, he served as a consultant to the US Atomic Energy Commission (1951-1953). He did field research in Nigeria in 1911 related to the pathology of general paresis. Best known of his work on infectious diseases are his contributions to the understanding rickettsial illnesses, Rocky Mountain spotted fever (1919), and epidemic typhus in Poland (1920). Wolbach's most fundamental work was in the field of vitamin research, and the relationships of vitamins to tissue structure and the pathology of scurvy and other diseases.

(For his participation in medical societies and consultancies to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the like, please see his obituary.)