Allen C. Steere

The physician who identified Lyme disease

• Physician and rheumatologist; Fort Wayne was his hometown

On the record

Allen C. Steere grew up in Fort Wayne — his hometown, in the words of the American College of Rheumatology's magazine — and by eighteen he was performing as a violinist with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra. He studied violin with Ivan Galamian, the Juilliard teacher, before focal dystonia ended his playing at twenty-eight and medicine became his career; he took his medical degree at Columbia in 1969. As an officer of the Centers for Disease Control's Epidemic Intelligence Service (1973–75) and then a fellow at Yale, he was sent in 1976 to evaluate a cluster of arthritis cases around Lyme, Connecticut; with Stephen Malawista he is credited with identifying and naming the condition — Lyme disease. He has published some three hundred scholarly articles and is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of translational research in rheumatology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Reference databases disagree on his birth year and birthplace, and this entry claims neither: the Fort Wayne tie the record supports is that the city was his hometown.

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• § 06 — people of the record · famous-people supplement

Sources: The Rheumatologist (American College of Rheumatology magazine); Massachusetts General Hospital (faculty biography).