Wilbur Augustus Sawyer was an American public health administrator and medical researcher.
Background
Wilbur Augustus was born on August 7, 1879 in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States, the son of Wesley Caleb Sawyer, a university professor, and Minnie Edmea Birge. His father taught European languages and philosophy at Lawrence University in Appleton. When Wilbur was three years old, the family moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and, in 1888 to Stockton, California, where the father spent the rest of his career as a dean, vice-president, president, and faculty member at the University of the Pacific.
Education
After attending the University of California in 1898-1899, Sawyer entered Harvard College, from which he received an A. B. in 1902. He graduated from the Harvard Medical School in 1906.
Career
After a brief period of private practice, Wilbur Augustus began an internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
In 1908 Sawyer returned to California. From 1908 to 1911 he was a medical examiner at the University of California, thus beginning his career in public health administration and medical research. He served with the California State Board of Health from 1910, when he was appointed director of the State Hygienic Laboratory, until 1918.
In 1915 he became secretary and executive officer of the Board of Health. He also held faculty appointments at the University of California Medical School, as a lecturer in hygiene and preventive medicine (1914 - 1916) and as a clinical professor (1916 - 1919).
Sawyer joined the State Board of Health just after a scandal about the mishandling of an outbreak of plague in San Francisco, and assisted in drafting a new state health law. Beginning research on poliomyelitis, he published his first paper in 1913; and in 1915 he made what was later regarded as the fundamental discovery: that the virus could be detected in the stools of victims of the disease.
The entry of the United States into World War I provided the impetus and contacts that shaped Sawyer's later career in national and international health administration and research. In 1918 and 1919, as a captain, major, and lieutenant colonel in the Army Medical Corps, Sawyer was involved in controlling venereal disease in military training camps. He served simultaneously as acting general secretary of the American Social Hygiene Association, the leading voluntary organization assisting in control of venereal disease, and published descriptions of the campaign against prostitution and disease.
After 1919, Sawyer held executive and scientific positions with the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. From 1919 to 1922 he directed a campaign against a hookworm epidemic in Australia. He rose through the administrative ranks of the board: assistant regional director for the East (1923 - 1924); director, Public Health Laboratory Service (1924 - 1927); associate director and then director, International Health Division (1927 - 1944).
Sawyer's reputation was securely established in 1926 and 1927 when, as director of the West African Yellow Fever Commission, he was credited with major responsibility for the isolation of the yellow fever virus. Four of his colleagues in West Africa died from laboratory experiments that eventually demonstrated that rhesus monkeys could be inoculated with yellow fever virus and thus be subjects of experiments in the search for methods of immunization. Sawyer himself contracted the disease but recovered.
Returning to the United States in 1928, Sawyer did his most original scientific work as director of the Yellow Fever Laboratories of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1931, with Wray Lloyd, he devised experiments with mice and received a remedy against yellow fever in man. Sawyer's own small son, Wilbur Henderson Sawyer, was among the first ten volunteers to be immunized.
In 1944 Sawyer became director of health for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). For the next three years, with a staff of over 1, 000 he worked ondisease prevention.
After his UNRRA service, Sawyer retired to Berkeley, California, where he spent the rest of his life.
Sawyer was a Methodist with a "deep religious sense".
Personality
A small man with a large bald head, Sawyer wore round, steel-rimmed eyeglasses which made him look like a wise old owl. Sawyer was totally involved with his work.
Quotes from others about the person
An English colleague described Sawyer's conviction that "life consisted in doing the next thing and that to do it as well as possible would usually be interesting and even pleasurable".
Connections
Sawyer married Margaret Henderson on October 14, 1911; they had three children.