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of Accurate Syphilis Test
William
A. Hinton 1883-1959
 The
son of former slaves, William A. Hinton earned a bachelor's degree and a medical
degree with honors from Harvard University in 1905. Harvard had offered this promising
student a scholarship for Negro students, but Hinton refused and instead won two
other scholarships in competition with the entire student body.
Hinton
first worked for the Wasserman Laboratory, which was then a part of the Harvard
Medical School and later a division of the Massachusetts Department of Public
Health. From 1921 to 1946 he taught bacteriology and immunology at Harvard. Hinton
was the first African American to become a professor at Harvard Medical School
and the first to publish a medical textbook, Syphilis and Its Treatment (1936).
During the 1920s Hinton developed his world-renowned test for syphilis. In 1931
he improved the accuracy of the test, now called the Davies-Hinton Test, which
was used during World War II.
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