Statement

We join in strongly recommending Dr. William Henry Welch (1850-1934) for
election of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, as he was the central figure
in the development of medical education and research in America during his active
lifetime. Like many great men who have not won a Nobel Prize, his work had
marked influence in a wider area than the usual specialized contribution for

which a Nobel award is given.

Indeed, he created the milieu in medicine that

made possible the execution of research of the highest order, The first three
Nobel Prizes in Physiology and Medicine on this side of the Atlantic were to men
who worked at one of the institutions he had launched (John Hopkins and Rocke-

feller Institute).

At the international celebration of Welch's 80th birthday, President Herbert
Hoover (honorary head of the celebration) referred to him as “our greatest states-

man in the field of public health."

On that occasion, Abraham Flexner, author of

the famous Carnegie Report of 1910 on Medical Education in the U.S. (wherein

Welch is the first person to whom acknowledgment is made), wrote to Welch: "It is
not too much to say that you have been the cornerstone of the entire development

in modern medicine and public health in this country: without you, no Johns
Hopkins Medical School, as we know it; no... Rockefeller Institute...and all the
other great things which are outgrowths of the work you have done...I should myself
have done nothing without you...and so to you is to be traced, without the slightest
doubt, whatever good has been accomplished in that field by the General Education

Board and the Rockefeller Foundation.

pression."

I am grateful to you...beyond power of ex-

Dr. Welch responded to these warm tributes with the modest statement: "... I

stand here to represent an army of..

.colleagues, whose work and contributions...

have advanced the science and art of medicine and public health to the eminent
position which they now hold in this country."

In strongly supporting the election of Dr. Welch to the Hall of Fame, we
speak not only as Nobel Laureates, but also as spokesmen for this great army, of
devoted men and women to whom Dr. Welch referred, and for the American people who
owe so much to his inspired leadership in Medicine and Public Health.

George Beadle
Calif. Institute of Technology

Carl F. Cori
Washington University

Edward A. Doisy
St. Louis University

Edward C. Kendall
Princeton University

John H. Northrop
University of California

Frederick C. Robbins
Western Reserve University

Wendell M. Stanley
University of California

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Edward L. Tatum
The Rockefeller Institute

Thomas H. Weller
Harvard School of Public Health
Massachusetts