William Thompson Sedgwick was born in West Hartford, Connecticut on December 29, 1855; he died in Boston, Massachusetts on January 26, 1921. Sedgwick was the son of William and Anne Louise Sedgwick, and the husband of Mary Katrine Rice, whom he married in 1881 (they had no children). A student of Newell Martin, Sedgwick obtained a Ph.B degree in 1877 from the Sheffield Scientific School (Yale); and a Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1881. From 1879 to 1883, he was a member of the physiological chemistry faculty at Johns Hopkins University; and from 1883 to 1921 of the biology faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (from 1911 to 1921 he belonged to the biology and public health faculty). From 1888 to 1921, he served as consulting biologist for the Massachusetts State board of Health (from 1902 to 1921 he was a member of the advisory board of the Hygienic Laboratory of the U.S. Public Health Service); and from 1913 to...