Frost, Wade Hampton (1880–1938)

Wade Hampton Frost was a pioneering epidemiologist. Following a distinguished career in the United States Public Health Service, he became the first professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. He made seminal observations on the epidemiology of infectious diseases and major contributions to epidemiological methods.

Frost was born in Marshall, Virginia, on March 3, 1880. He attended the University of Virginia, graduating in 1903 with both bachelor's and medical degrees. After internships in New York, he enlisted in the U.S. Public Health Service in 1905. In 1908, he was assigned to the National Hygienic Laboratory in Washington, the forerunner of the National Institutes of Health.

Frost studied water pollution at the National Hygienic Laboratory. His paper describing a typhoid outbreak in ...