Anna Wessels Williams

Life & Legacy

Anna Wessels Williams (1863–1954) was an American pathologist and public-health physician who worked at the first municipal diagnostic laboratory in the United States. She used her medical training from the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary for research rather than clinical practice, and over the course of her career, she contributed to the development of vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests for many diseases, including diphtheria, rabies, scarlet fever, smallpox, influenza, and meningitis. Notably, a strain of diphtheria-causing bacteria that Williams isolated and cultivated—later named Park-Williams No. 8—was instrumental in producing an antitoxin that helped bring the disease under control.

Williams also developed the standard diagnostic test for rabies, coauthored several widely used medical texts, and was among the first American women to make lasting contributions to laboratory medicine. In 1932, she became the first woman elected chair of the laboratory section of the American Public Health Association.