C. E. A. Winslow

Charles-Edward Winslow was born in Boston and graduated from M.I.T. in 1898. He was on the M.I.T. faculty from 1902 to 1910, and at City College, New York, from 1910 to 1914 before going to Yale, where he was appointed Professor of Public Health.

Public Health, which means preventive medicine, was the field to which he devoted his whole life. His consuming interest was for ever-advancing human welfare, and with this he combined a respect for the realities of finance, politics, and contemporary public opinion that made him an exceedingly effective leader. He remarked that, within limitations, a community could determine its own death rate and that proper social organization was no less important than the science of biology.

Soon after joining the Yale faculty, Winslow directed a public health survey of New Haven. It furnished a pattern for community surveys that the Yale department has made in scores of cities since then. Winslow clearly understood not only that slums were breeders of disease but “the sense of inferiority due to living in a substandard home is a far more serious menace to the health of our children than all the unsanitary plumbing in the United States.”

He was a member of the Century for forty-three years, and all that long time brought lustre to the Club and friendly companionship to the members.

George W. Martin
1958 Century Association Yearbook