John W. Vinson papers

John William Vinson (1916-1979), B.S., 1940, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; D.Sc., 1958, Harvard School of Public Health (now the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health), Boston, Massachusetts, was Associate Professor of Microbiology at Harvard School of Public Health from 1969 to 1979. His research focused on rickettsial diseases, particularly trench fever.

John W. Vinson was born on 15 April 1916 in Tampa, Florida to John Clifford Vinson, a physician, and Aldine Jewel Knight. He was listed as white in the 1930 U.S. Census. He attended Duke University, receiving a B.S. in 1940 and earned a D.Sc. from Harvard School of Public Health in 1958. During World War II, he was an officer in the U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps and studied Tsutsugamushi disease (also known as scrub typhus, a disease spread through larval mite bites that causes fevers, aches, and rashes). After the war, Vinson worked as the Head of the Virology Laboratory at Charles Pfizer and Co., Inc. (1948-1952). He held several positions at the Harvard School of Public Health including Research Fellow (1950-1952), Assistant in Microbiology (1955-1958), Research Associate in Microbiology (1960-1967), Lecturer on Microbiology (1963-1969), Senior Research Associate in Microbiology (1967-1969), and Associate Professor of Microbiology (1969-1979). He also was a curator of the Hans Zinsser Library, a collection of bound pamphlets and reprints on rickettsiae at the Harvard School for Public Health. Between 1961 and 1975, Vinson conducted field research on trench fever and typhus in Mexico, Guatemala, and Tunisia.

Vinson was the first scientist to isolate and cultivate Rickettsia quintana, the microorganism that causes trench fever. He was also interested in the uses of electron microscopy for research on rickettsial diseases and studied lice and fleas as carriers of rickettsiae. This research contributed to the development of a trench fever vaccine. Vinson received the Hans Zinsser Memorial Award in 1964 for his work on trench fever. In addition to rickettsial diseases, Vinson researched other topics in microbiology including sexually transmitted diseases. In the 1960s, Vinson developed the first and only formal course at the Harvard School of Public Health on sexually transmitted diseases, one of the few in the United States at the time. He also researched a fever-causing fungus in Norway and Sweden. Earlier in his career, he was a member of a research team at Charles Pfizer and Co., Inc. that discovered the fourth antibiotic, Terramycin. For this achievement, he received the 1950 Commercial Solvents Award in Antibiotics. Vinson was also affiliated with the American Board of Microbiologists. He was additionally a member of several professional associations, including American Society for Microbiology, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Venereal Disease Association (now American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association), International Union Against Venereal Diseases and Treponematoses (now International Union Against Sexually Transmitted Infections), and British Society for the Study of the Venereal Disease (now British Association for Sexual Health and HIV).

Vinson died on 07 September 1979 of cardiac arrest at age 63 in Manchester, Massachusetts.