Carleton B. Chapman, MD, MPH

Abstract

Carleton B. Chapman, who made important contributions in 4 areas of medicine, died in Hanover, New Hampshire, on December 10, 2000. These areas included cardiovascular medicine and research, medical education, philanthropy, and medical history and ethics. His career can be separated temporally into periods when he focused on each of these areas, although he was active in all of them throughout his career. Dr Chapman was born on June 11, 1915, in Sycamore, Alabama (the same small community that produced Tinsley Harrison). He attended public schools in Talladega and graduated from Talladega High School. He was a precociously talented concert organist during his school years, and he seriously considered a career in music. Although he ultimately chose medicine, he maintained his passion for playing the organ throughout his life. He entered Davidson College in 1932 as a liberal arts major, where he became President of the Student Body and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. By the time of his graduation in 1936, he had developed an interest in human physiology, which he pursued at Oxford University after being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. As a student of St Johns College, Oxford, from 1936 to 1939, he received his BA and MA degrees in Physiology. During that time, he worked with the famous respiratory and exercise physiologist Professor C.G. Douglas. He returned to the United States in 1939 and completed medical school at Harvard, where he received his MD in 1941 and his MPH in 1944. His training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology was received at Boston City Hospital from 1941 to 1944. From 1944 to 1946, he was in the Public Health Service and was stationed first in the Middle East and then in China and Indonesia. In 1946, he returned to Harvard and did a second …