Joseph Walter Mountin (1891-1952) was born and educated in Wisconsin. He received his medical degree from Marquette University School of Medicine in 1914. During World War I he joined the U.S. Public Health Service. Mountin was special assistant to the commissioner of the Tennessee State Health Department from 1927 to 1931. During the 1930s he worked in and eventually became director of the PHS Office of Studies of Public Health Methods. In 1946, while director of the PHS's States Relations Division, Mountin founded the CDC as a permanent outgrowth of the wartime Malaria Control in War Areas program. Mountin's primary focus throughout his PHS career was to explore ways to provide broader health care coverage to suit the needs of all the people and included advocacy for a national health system.
From the guide to the Joseph W. Mountin Reprints, 1928-1951, (History of Medicine Division. National Library of Medicine)