William H. Stewart (May 19, 1921 – April 23, 2008) was an American pediatrician and epidemiologist. He was appointed tenth Surgeon General of the United States from 1965 to 1969. Biography Early life and education Stewart was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He began college at the University of Minnesota and completed his undergraduate degree at Louisiana State University (LSU) (1942), after his father moved the family to Baton Rouge during World War II to chair the pediatrics department at LSU. Stewart earned his medical degree through an accelerated program at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, under the auspices of the U.S. Army's Specialized Training Program. After graduating in 1945, he received a commission as a first lieutenant, kept an inactive status during his 9-month internship at Philadelphia General Hospital, and then served as a Medical Officer at Brooke General Hospital in San Antonio, Texas (1946–1947). After a brief stint at the Minneapolis Veterans Administration hospital at Fort Snelling, Stewart returned home to Baton Rouge for a 2-year pediatrics residency at Charity Hospital (1948–1950). His plans to enter private practice were cut short by the outbreak of the Korean War and his remaining military obligation. Early career Stewart's introduction to the Public Health Service (PHS) came when the Air Force agreed to transfer him into the first class of renowned epidemiologist Alexander Langmuir's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) at the Communicable Disease Center (CDC). In February 1951, Stewart accepted a Commission in PHS's Inactive Reserve as a Senior Assistant Surgeon. Four months later, he was dispatched as the sole physician epidemiologist to CDC’s Thomasville, Georgia Field Station. As an EIS Fellow he worked under Dr. James Watt (soon to be named Director of the new National Heart Institute) (NIH), studying how fly eradication dampened outbreaks of childhood diarrheal diseases and about DDT's efficacy in combating typhus. After EIS, Stewart followed his mentor to the National Heart Institute and became a trainee at the Grants and Training Branch of the National Heart Institute (November 1953). When PHS opened a Heart Disease Control Program under its Bureau of State Services (BSS), Stewart was named chief (October 1954), returning to NIH in July 1956 to lead its Technical Services Branch. In April 1957 then-Surgeon General LeRoy Edgar Burney recruited junior officer Stewart to join his staff. Stewart managed a number of projects related to planning, administrative reorganization, and health professions education and