William Henry Howell

William Henry Howell (1860 to 1945) was an American physiologist who spent most of his career at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Born in that city, he took his first degree at Johns Hopkins in 1881, later added a medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1890 and a doctorate from Johns Hopkins in 1894, and taught at Michigan and Harvard before settling permanently at Hopkins. He is remembered as a pioneer in the use of heparin as a blood anticoagulant. Howell served as dean of the medical school from 1899 to 1911 and helped found the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, which he later led as dean. His Text-Book of Physiology, first published in 1905, remained a standard text for medical students for about fifty years. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.