John Zimmerman Bowers

John Zimmerman Bowers (August 27, 1913–October 18, 1993) was an American medical educator and historian.

Early life and education
Bowers was born to a Lutheran pastor on August 27, 1913 in Catonsville, Maryland. In 1933 he graduated from Gettysburg College with B.S. degree and five years later got his MD degree from the University of Maryland. During World War II he was a commander of the Navy Medical Corps on a destroyer which was torpedoed. Despite his wounds that he endured during the Guadalcanal Campaign, he survived and was awarded the Legion of Merit and the Purple Heart. Before he got discharged from the United States Navy, he spent six months in Harvard University where Shields Warren mentored him in pathology at the New England Deaconess Hospital.

Career
From 1947 to 1950, Bowers served as Deputy Director of the Biology and Medicine Division of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and only this way it was possible for him to witness the nuclear weapons testing at Enewetak Atoll. In August 1949, Bowers was sent to Japan to study survivors of atomic bombardment in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While in Japan, Bowers collaborated with Warren on studies of acute radiation syndrome and electrolytes, which occur when human body is exposed to radiation. In 1950 he returned to Baltimore, Maryland, where he served as a director of the Radioactive Isotope Laboratory and then held the same position at the Crocker Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley as its research fellow. The same year, Bowers became an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and was the youngest dean and professor at the University of Utah College of Medicine. During those times, he used to train Navajos and Indians to perform health auxiliaries.

As a director of Radiology Laboratory at the University of Utah, Bowers studied the effects of radiation for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. In 1955 he was chosen as a dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine (now University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health). From 1958 to 1961 he was a member of the Health and Resources Advisory Committee under presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In 1960, John Bowers returned to Kyoto University, where he served as a visiting professor at its School of Medicine and from 1962 to 1964 held the same position at the University of the Philippines. In 1964 Bowers joined the Rockefeller Foundation and a year later became president of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation where he served from 1965 to 1980 and was behind organization of periodic Macy conferences on topics such as the special problems women face in medical school and the help women need to combine postgraduate training with motherhood. Between those years, he also worked on teaching biology in black colleges so that students of color would be better prepared for medical school. From 1968 to 1978 he was a president of Alpha Omega Alpha of the National Medical Honor Society and guided its Leaders in American Medicine program.

Awards
In 1980, Huang Chiassu, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences personally invited Bowers to visit China. Bowers also was decorated with the Legion of Honour and the Order of the Rising Sun, among other awards and honorary doctorates.

Personal life
John Z. Bowers married Akiko Kobayashi in 1970, after she came to New York University to study business nine years ago. She was the first female director of protocol and Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations. Together they had three children; two sons and a daughter.

Works
During his career, he had written two books; Western Medical Pioneers in Feudal Japan (Johns Hopkins, 1970) and When the Twain Meet: The Rise of Western Medicine in Japan (Johns Hopkins, 1981). He also was co-editor of the Advances in American Medicine (Books on Demand) and Science & Medicine in Twentieth-Century China (University of Michigan, 1989).