author

Charles W. Bodemer

A historian of medicine and longtime University of Washington faculty member, he explored how medical ideas, institutions, and ethics developed over time. His work often connected big changes in science and healthcare to the people and communities shaped by them.

1 Audiobook

Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England

Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England

by Charles W. Bodemer, Lester S. (Lester Snow) King

About the author

Born in Denison, Iowa, in 1927, he studied zoology at Pomona College and later earned a Ph.D. in anatomy from Cornell University. Before his academic career, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1944 to 1947, with postings in Japan, China, and the South Pacific.

He joined the University of Washington faculty in 1956, beginning in the Department of Anatomy. In the 1960s he moved into academic leadership, serving as assistant dean and then associate dean of medicine, and in 1967 he founded the University of Washington's Department of Biomedical History.

His writing and lectures ranged widely across the history of medicine, from seventeenth-century embryological thought to the growth of medical care in the Pacific Northwest and the changing ethics of modern practice. He chaired the Department of Biomedical History until his death in February 1985, and his influence at the University of Washington was later honored through the Charles W. Bodemer Lectureship and the Bodemer Interprofessional Ethics Lab.