William Thompson Sedgwick

William Thompson Sedgwick (December 29 1855, West Hartford – January 25 1921, Boston) was a key figure in shaping public health in the United States.

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William T. Sedgwick completed his college education at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University in 1877 and received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1881.

He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1883 until his death in 1921, aged 65, initially as Associate Professor (1884), as tenured Professor (1891) and eventually as head of the department of Biology and Public Health.

Sedgwick was the first president of the Society of American Bacteriologists (now American Society for Microbiology) in 1899-1901. He also played a key role in Samuel Cate Prescott's choice to go into bacteriology as a career, and was instrumental in Prescott's selection in the canning research with William Lyman Underwood in 1895–6 that would lead to the growth of food technology.

References

• Goldblith, S.A. (1993). Pioneers in Food Science, Volume 1: Samuel Cate Prescott - M.I.T. Dean and Pioneer Food Technologist. Trumball, CT: Food and Nutrition Press. pp. 10, 21, 28, 33, 41, 49-50, 56-57.
• [jb.asm.org/cgi/reprint/6/3/i2.pdf William Thompson Sedgwick]