Career
He launched the infectious disease division at the University of Pennsylvania while a professor there in 1971. After leaving the University of Pennsylvania, Root worked on infectious diseases at Yale University and served as vice chairman of medicine. In 1982 he was voted medical school teacher of the year.
He later became chief of medicine at Harborview 1991 and became an emeritus professor in 2002.
He was a former president of the American Federation of Clinical Research, editor in chief of a textbook, Clinical Infectious Diseases, and, from 1986 to 1991, director of the National Institutes of Health"s Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Advisory Committee. Root received his Doctor of Medicine from Johns Hopkins University in 1963.
Residency and Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1963-1965. Chief Resident and Instructor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington from 1968-1969.
He was invited by the University of Pennsylvania Infectious Disease Department to help out on a project in Botswana.
He intended to return to the United States at the end of April, but Root"s life came to a sudden end three weeks later, due to a crocodile attack while on a wildlife tour of the Limpopo River. He was in the lead canoe with a guide when a 13-foot crocodile exploded from the water and wrenched him out of his seat and overboard. Witnesses state that the canoe shook but was not overturned.
