William Bennett Bean was born in the Philippines in 1909 and grew up in the U.S. His father, Robert Bennett Bean, was a physician of note and a resident under William Osler. William Bennett Bean received his M.D. from the University of Virginia in 1935. He interned at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Bean became an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati but soon after was inducted in to the U.S. Army, where his assignments included important research in nutrition and dehydration. Dr. Bean returned to the University of Cincinnati in 1946 as associate professor, but left in 1948 to become head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa. He left Iowa in 1974 to become director of the Institute for Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. In 1980 he returned to Iowa and in 1982 published Walter Reed: A Biography. (From http://www.vh.org/adult/provider/history/bean/, Sept. 17, 2003)