Background
Winslow was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), obtaining a Bachelor of Surgery in 1898 and an Master of Surgery in 1910.
Winslow was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), obtaining a Bachelor of Surgery in 1898 and an Master of Surgery in 1910.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He began his career as a bacteriologist. 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. 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 editor of the American Journal of Public Health from 1944 to 1954. He was curator of public health at the American Museum of Natural History from 1910 to 1922. In 1926 he became president of the American Public Health Association, and in the 1950s was a consultant to the World Health Organization.
He was the youngest charter member of the Society of American Bacteriologists when that organization was founded in 1899.