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Alexander Langmuir
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Alexander Langmuir
Alexander Duncan Langmuir (/ˈlæŋmjʊər/; September 12, 1910 – November 22, 1993) was an American epidemiologist who served as Chief Epidemiologist of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1949 to 1970, developing the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) as a training program for epidemiologists.
During his tenure, Langmuir broadened the CDC's scope to include the epidemiology of non-communicable diseases, environmental health, and family planning. Additionally, Langmuir increased coordination between the CDC and state and territorial epidemiologists.
Langmuir has been praised for transferring publication of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) to the CDC, ushering in plain English explanations of ongoing health crises that were useful for both scientists and members of the public.
Langmuir was born on September 12, 1910, in Santa Monica, California, to New York Life Insurance Company President Charles H. Langmuir and Edith Ruggles Langmuir as the third of five children. From 1921 onward, he was raised in Englewood, New Jersey, with his brothers Peter, Charles, and David and sister Edith. As President of the Harvard Liberal Club, Langmuir led the university's delegation to the 1931 Conference of International Student Service at Mount Holyoke College, denouncing American college students for their detachment from politics, which he blamed for the poor economic policies that led to the ongoing Great Depression.
In March 1932, Langmuir served on the student honorary board of a Model League of Nations conference with 28 New England universities, overseeing discussions of post-World War One disarmament, conflicts over the Polish Corridor, and the Second Sino-Japanese War. He later credited these political simulations as preparation for his work in the federal government.
Langmuir graduated from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts in Physics in 1931. Despite his initial interest in following his Nobel Prize-winning uncle, Irving Langmuir, by specializing in surface science, Langmuir found advanced mathematics too difficult, leading him to the biomedical statistics of epidemiology.
After receiving his Doctor of Medicine from Cornell University Medical College in 1935, he completed a two-year residency in internal medicine at Boston City Hospital. His first paper was published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1934, associating a patient's present condition with their stage of tuberculosis upon admission, duration of sanatorium treatment, and extent of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterial colonization in their sputum.
While attending medical school, Langmuir met with Massachusetts Commissioner of Health George Hoyt Bigelow, who encouraged him to pursue public health by describing the epidemiology behind an investigation of milk contamination in Lee, Massachusetts, that resulted in cases of sore throats and scarlet fever. After working as a medical consultant on pneumonia control for the New York State Department of Health from 1937 to 1939, Langmuir pursued a Master in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, graduating in 1940. Learning from Biostatistics Chair Lowell Reed and Epidemiology Chair Wade Hampton Frost, Langmuir would later adapt their work by introducing compartmental models to the CDC to predict the growth of epidemics and allocate vaccine doses.
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Alexander Langmuir
Alexander Duncan Langmuir (/ˈlæŋmjʊər/; September 12, 1910 – November 22, 1993) was an American epidemiologist who served as Chief Epidemiologist of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1949 to 1970, developing the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) as a training program for epidemiologists.
During his tenure, Langmuir broadened the CDC's scope to include the epidemiology of non-communicable diseases, environmental health, and family planning. Additionally, Langmuir increased coordination between the CDC and state and territorial epidemiologists.
Langmuir has been praised for transferring publication of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) to the CDC, ushering in plain English explanations of ongoing health crises that were useful for both scientists and members of the public.
Langmuir was born on September 12, 1910, in Santa Monica, California, to New York Life Insurance Company President Charles H. Langmuir and Edith Ruggles Langmuir as the third of five children. From 1921 onward, he was raised in Englewood, New Jersey, with his brothers Peter, Charles, and David and sister Edith. As President of the Harvard Liberal Club, Langmuir led the university's delegation to the 1931 Conference of International Student Service at Mount Holyoke College, denouncing American college students for their detachment from politics, which he blamed for the poor economic policies that led to the ongoing Great Depression.
In March 1932, Langmuir served on the student honorary board of a Model League of Nations conference with 28 New England universities, overseeing discussions of post-World War One disarmament, conflicts over the Polish Corridor, and the Second Sino-Japanese War. He later credited these political simulations as preparation for his work in the federal government.
Langmuir graduated from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts in Physics in 1931. Despite his initial interest in following his Nobel Prize-winning uncle, Irving Langmuir, by specializing in surface science, Langmuir found advanced mathematics too difficult, leading him to the biomedical statistics of epidemiology.
After receiving his Doctor of Medicine from Cornell University Medical College in 1935, he completed a two-year residency in internal medicine at Boston City Hospital. His first paper was published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1934, associating a patient's present condition with their stage of tuberculosis upon admission, duration of sanatorium treatment, and extent of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterial colonization in their sputum.
While attending medical school, Langmuir met with Massachusetts Commissioner of Health George Hoyt Bigelow, who encouraged him to pursue public health by describing the epidemiology behind an investigation of milk contamination in Lee, Massachusetts, that resulted in cases of sore throats and scarlet fever. After working as a medical consultant on pneumonia control for the New York State Department of Health from 1937 to 1939, Langmuir pursued a Master in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, graduating in 1940. Learning from Biostatistics Chair Lowell Reed and Epidemiology Chair Wade Hampton Frost, Langmuir would later adapt their work by introducing compartmental models to the CDC to predict the growth of epidemics and allocate vaccine doses.
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