I first became aware of the work of Wade Hampton Frost many years ago when, as a young faculty member, I was given the responsibility of organizing and presenting much of the curricular material on tuberculosis for medical students at my university. I was not then and am not now an epidemiologist, but it was apparent to me that my teaching would have to include the epidemiology of tuberculosis. My knowledge of the clinical disease was not enough. I began reading and studying. It became clear to me that I would have to present Frost’s cohort analyses of the age selection of tuberculosis mortality. Without this major work, one could not understand the age-specific case rates for tuberculosis in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

Many years later I moved to emeritus status at Case Western Reserve University, and I began writing medical history. By this time, I had a greater appreciation of Frost’s importance, and I decided to include him in a book profiling six great medical pioneers (Pioneers of Medicine and Their Impact on Tuberculosis, University of Rochester Press, 2000). In the process I discovered, first, that no biography of Frost had been written, although a number of short biographical sketches had appeared, and, second, that all of Frost’s personal papers had been archived at the University of Virginia. It was apparent to me that Frost deserved a biography, and I decided that I would undertake the task.

Biographies come in many sorts. Some focus on the personal lives of public figures with well-known public lives. Others try to establish the place in history of someone not well known but important to the author. Others devote their pages to thoughtful analyses of the subject’s work. Others are essentially prolonged eulogies. Similarly, the motivations of biographers are varied. Academic scholars often undertake such works, sometimes as outgrowths of graduate theses. A few fortunate authors are sufficiently well read to earn money from a published biography, especially when the subject is currently newsworthy.

What sort of biography is this? This book tells the little-known life story of a major academic medical figure. In doing so, it attempts to set his work in context and demonstrate its importance. It does not, however, provide a detailed analysis of Frost’s published papers; interested readers should read these works themselves.