Physician and Researcher Dr. George Miller Sternberg began his distinguished career as an assistant surgeon in the Union army and was even captured during the Civil War. Fortunately for us, he escaped and became a leading bacteriologist. Among his achievements was participating in the Havana Yellow Fever Commission in 1879; identifying the malaria plasmodium; and discovering pneumococcus, the bacterium that causes pneumonia, in 1881. In 1893, he was named surgeon general of the United States. During the early waves of immigration, Dr. Sternberg served as a consultant on Ellis Island, inspecting newly arrived immigrants for various diseases. He was instrumental in establishing the Army Medical School in 1893, the Typhoid Fever Board in 1898, the Army nurse corps and the Army dental corps. Dr. Sternberg died on this date in 1915.
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