Luther Leonidas Terry
| Luther Terry | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 9th Surgeon General of the United States | |
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In office 1961–1965 |
|
| President |
John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson |
| Preceded by | Leroy Edgar Burney |
| Succeeded by | William H. Stewart |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
September 15, 1911 Red Level, Alabama |
| Died | March 29, 1985 (aged 73) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
Luther Terry (September 15, 1911 – March 29, 1985) was an American physician and public health official. He was appointed the ninth Surgeon General of the United States from 1961 to 1965, and is best known for his warnings against the dangers and the impact of tobacco use on health.
Luther Leonidas Terry was born in Red Level, Alabama. His father, James Edward Terry, M.D., a graduate of the University of Alabama School of Medicine, was the "town doctor" for Red Level. Many of Luther Terry's earliest memories were of helping his father in the pharmacy and clinical offices in Red Level and driving his father in the family's Ford Model A to emergency appointments out in the county.
Luther Terry earned a B.S. degree at Birmingham-Southern College in 1931, where he was initiated into the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. He then received an M.D. degree at Tulane University in 1935. After interning at the Hillman Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, and serving a residency in Cleveland Hospitals, Terry moved to Washington University in St. Louis in 1938 for an internship in pathology. The following year, he became an instructor at that institution, and subsequently served as instructor and assistant professor of preventive medicine and public health at the University of Texas at Galveston from 1940 to 1942.
In 1942, Terry joined the staff of the Public Health Service Hospital in Baltimore, becoming Chief of Medical Services there the following year. His interest in cardiovascular research led him to accept the position of Chief of General Medicine and Experimental Therapeutics at the National Heart Institute in Bethesda in 1950, at first on a part-time basis while continuing his work at the Baltimore hospital. When the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center opened in 1953, Terry's Heart Institute program was moved to the new facility and he devoted his full-time to the job. He also served as the first Chairman of the Medical Board of the Clinical Center (1953–1955) and was concurrently instructor and then assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1944 to 1961. Terry and his team laid the foundations for what has been called "the golden era of cardiovascular clinical investigation".
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