Alexander Gilliam diaries

Alexander Gordon Gilliam (1904-1963) was a physician and original member of the United States Typhus Commission in 1943. He was born in Petersburg, Virginia, matriculated at the the University of Virginia in 1923, was a member of the Raven Society, and Phi Beta Kappa. After receiving a bachelors degree in three years, he went to Shanghai to teach at St. John's University until it closed in 1927. Gilliam decided to return to the University of Virginia to attend medical school, graduating in 1931. In the same year he married and was an intern at the University Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In 1932 he went to Johns Hopkins Medical School(the school of hygiene) under a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, studying epidemiology from Dr. Wade Hampton Frost, and earning a doctorate in Public Health. In 1934 he joined the United States Public Health Service as a commissioned officer, a Senior Surgeon, and joined the United States Typhus Commission which was formed by Executive Order from President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 to study typhus and protect soldies from getting it.

During his career, he was stationed in Egypt, China, Natal, Brazil, Accra, Maiduguri, Nigeria, Khartoum, Lake Chad, Fort Lamy, Seattle, Washington, Los Angeles,California, Washington State, Baltimore, Maryland, Atlanta, Georgia and Ann Arbor, Michigan (as a teacher at the University of Michigan Medical School). He retired from the government in the fall of 1960 to be full professor of epidemiology at John Hopkins. He died of cancer in Baltimore, Maryland in December 1963.