Gorham, Frederic P.

Frederic Poole Gorham (1871-1933), professor of bacteriology, was born in Providence on April 29, 1871. He graduated from Brown in 1893 and earned a master of arts degree in 1894. He continued his studies at Harvard, where examination of diphteria cultures were being examined for the city of Boston. He was named instructor in biology at Brown in 1893, assistant professor in 1899, and associate professor in 1901. In 1913 he established bacteriology as a study at Brown, and was appointed professor of bacteriology. He was also head of the Biology Department from 1928 until his death. In 1899 the Providence Department of Health appointed him as its bacteriologist, an office in which he continued until it was removed to the Charles V. Chapin Hospital in 1933. He became biologist and bacteriologist for the Rhode Island Shellfish Commission in 1913, and deputy milk inspector for the city of Providence in 1914. From 1925 to 1931 he was a member of the city park commission. He was voted an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1933, and, in his acknowledgment written in January, referred to this award as “an honor that I had never even dreamed would come to me,” adding, “I shall certainly be present, Deo volente, to receive the degree at the coming Commencement.” Unfortunately, two weeks before Commencement, on June 4, 1933, Gorham died after being stricken with a sudden heart attack in the garden of his summer home at Glocester.