David Lawrence Belding

David Lawrence Belding was an American scientist, physician, and teacher whose long career crossed several fields. Reliable sources identify him as born in 1884 and died in 1970, and describe him as a bacteriologist, pathologist, educator, and research administrator associated with Boston University School of Medicine. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1947.

Before becoming widely known for medical parasitology, he spent years studying fisheries and shellfish in Massachusetts. Archival and library records connect him with the Massachusetts fisheries service from 1905 to 1923 and credit him with major reports on scallops, mollusk fisheries, and alewife fisheries. A later commemorative essay also describes him as a central figure in shellfish biology, suggesting how strongly his early fieldwork shaped later marine research.

Belding also wrote important textbooks, including Textbook of Clinical Parasitology and Basic Clinical Parasitology. Those books helped establish his reputation as a clear interpreter of parasites and parasitic disease for medical readers. Taken together, his work shows an unusually broad scientific life: part naturalist, part physician, and part teacher.