Liebow, Averill A., 1911-1978

A native of Austria, Averill Liebow came to the United States as a young boy. He graduated magnum cum laude from City College of New York, and received his medical degree from Yale University in 1935. Appointed an assistant in pathology at Yale in 1935, he rose through the ranks to full professor in 1951. In 1968 he accepted the chairmanship of the department of pathology at the University of California, San Diego, which he held until his retirement in 1975. While on active duty during World War II, Liebow served as a pathologist with the 39th General Hospital, the Yale Unit in the South Pacific. During this time, he compiled elegant studies of cutaneous diphtheria that made specific treatment possible for a form of “jungle rot,” which was a major problem in the South Pacific theater of the war. Immediately after the war, Liebow was recruited as a member of the Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan organized by Col. Ashley W. Oughterson, on leave from Yale, and Prof. Masao Tsuzuki of Japan. Liebow and the members of the Commission reached Hiroshima on October 12. During the four months Liebow remained in Hiroshima, he wrote an extensive diary in shorthand of his observations.

From the guide to the Averill A. Liebow Collection, 1945-1966, 1945-1973, (Historical Library, Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library)

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