Augustus B. Wadsworth

Augustus Baldwin Wadsworth graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1892. From there he went at once into the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia and took his medical degree four years later. After he had finished his internship he decided to go into medical research, and in this field he spent the rest of his life.

He was an extremely lively and imaginative worker, and he not only was fertile himself in the study of bacteriology and immunology, but he was a competent and stimulating administrator of the laboratories which he came to have charge of. He was Director of the New York State Laboratories for the Study of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, President of the New York Pathological Society, Secretary of the Harvey Society, and honorably connected with numerous other medical associations of the City. He was a recognized expert on serum and vaccine therapy and coagulation of the blood.

With all this, Wadsworth was for some years officially listed among the ten topflight tennis players of the country. He was likewise a most remarkably good billiard player and could hold his own with the best players in the Club in the days when men could really play billiards. His eye was true and his hand was steady.

He was an autocrat in the things he chose to do, and he was sufficiently and liberally endowed so that he had freedom of choice. In his work—as in his play—he was a perfectionist, pursuing a clue through a thousand tests till he had run it to earth. When unexpected effects occurred, he could not rest till he understood the cause. He was catholic in his tastes and a wide reader in the literature outside his profession. He was kindly in his friendships and tolerant, but not of mediocrity.

To unroll a little more of the scroll of the mysteries of physiology is to serve one’s fellows well and to be content.

George W. Martin
1955 Century Association Yearbook