Walter Reed (1851-1902), American army surgeon and bacteriologist, who determined the cause of yellow fever.

Reed was born in Gloucester County, Virginia, on September 13, 1851, and was educated at the University of Virginia and Bellevue Hospital Medical College. In 1875 he was commissioned in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, serving as a military surgeon. In 1893 he was appointed curator of the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C. He also served in 1893 as professor of bacteriology and microscopy at the newly founded Army Medical College in Washington, D.C., and during the next seven years conducted important investigations of the etiology, control, and transmission of such epidemic diseases as yellow fever and typhoid fever. One of his most notable investigations was organized by the War Department to investigate a typhoid epidemic among American troops; the results of the findings of the committee contributed greatly to the subsequent prevention and control of typhoid epidemics.

Reed's greatest contribution to medical entomology, however, resulted from his work in 1900 as director of a commission to investigate the cause and transmission of yellow fever in Cuba. Reed conclusively demonstrated that the yellow-fever germ is transmitted by the bite of the mosquito Aëdes aegypti. As a result of Reed's findings, the American sanitationist William Crawford Gorgas was able virtually to eliminate the disease from Havana, Cuba, within three months by exterminating the mosquitoes in the area. Since 1901 the incidence of yellow fever has been drastically reduced throughout the world by application of Reed's discovery. Reed died in Washington, D.C., on November 22, 1902, shortly after his return from Cuba. The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., was named in the scientist's honor.