For forty-seven years Harold Dadford West was involved in biochemical research and education at Meharry Medical College. For thirteen of those years, he was president of the institution. He was selected to be the first honorary member of the National Medical Association, and the Science Center at Meharry was named for him.

Born in Flemington, New Jersey, on July 16, 1904, West was the son of George H. West and the former Mary Ann Toney. He attended the University of Illinois, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1925. He was an associate professor and head of the science department at Morris Brown College in Atlanta from 1925 to 1927. On December 27, 1927, West married Jessie Juanita Penn. They eventually had one daughter and one son.

In 1927 West joined the faculty of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, as an associate professor of physiological chemistry. Meharry Medical College had become an independent...