Dean Edsall Resigns as Head of Medical, Public Health Schools

Concluding seventeen years of service as dean of the Medical School, David Linn Edsall will relinquish his post next September 1, it was announced yesterday. Dr. Edsall, who is also resigning the posts of Dean of Medicine and Science, and Dean of the School of Public Health, submitted his resignation at the last meeting of the Corporation.

While no official pronouncement is forthcoming as yet concerning his successor. Walter B. Cannon '96, George Higginson Professor of Physiology, Hans Zinsser, professor of Bacteriology and Immunology, and John Homans '99, assistant professor of Surgery, have been mentioned as possible successors.

Dean Edsall, who is 65 years old, graduated from Princeton University in 1890. He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1893 and honorary Sc.D. from Princeton in 1913. In 1928 he was awarded an honorary S.D. by the University, which was conferred by President Lowell in the following words: "dean of our Medical School; in the progress of medical education in America, the leader."

Dean Edsall was professor of Therapeutics and Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1907 to 1910, and professor of Medicine there from 1910 to 1911. He was professor of Preventive Medicine at Washington University in Missouri in 1911-12. In 1912 he came to Harvard as Jackson Professor of Clinical Medicine. He has been Dean of the Medical School and of the Faculty of Medicine since 1918, and Dean of the School of Public Health since 1922 and of the Faculty of Dentistry since 1924.

He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Association of American Physicians, and a member of the American Philosophical Society and also has contributed many articles to medical journals.