Luther Terry

Luther Leonidas Terry (1911 to 1985) was an American physician and public health official who served as the ninth Surgeon General of the United States from 1961 to 1965. Born in Red Level, Alabama, the son of the town doctor, he took his medical degree at Tulane in 1935, trained in pathology and taught preventive medicine and public health before joining the Public Health Service in 1942. At the National Heart Institute and the NIH Clinical Center his team helped lay the foundations of what has been called the golden era of cardiovascular clinical investigation. President Kennedy named him Surgeon General in 1961, and in 1962 he set up the Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, whose 1964 report concluded that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and chronic bronchitis. The report led to the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965, and he kept campaigning against smoking after leaving office.