Description
Gift of Dr. Bennett; received 2/10/88, 5/17/89, 6/6/91, 8/30/93. Includes bibliography,
correspondence, manuscripts relating to Israel Lyon Chaikoff, MD; correspondence with
Edward H. Rynearson about Leonard Rowntree; with Alan Dundas; from Lincoln Constance.
Background
Leslie Latty Bennett was born in Portland, Oregon on November 15, 1908. He received an
A.B. degree in Zoology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1933 and a Ph.D.
in Anatomy, also from theUniversity of California, Berkeley, in 1937. In 1940 he received
his M.D. from the University of California and served his internship and residency at the
University of California Hospital in San Francisco. In the spring of 1942 he began a long
teaching association with the University of California School of Medicine, first as a
lecturer and instructor in physiology and medicine (1942-1943), then as an assistant
professor of physiology and medicine (1943-1945), and as an assistant professor of
physiology and experimental biology (1945-1948). Dr. Bennett took a sabbatical leave from
1948 to 1949, which he spent as a Commonwealth Fund senior medical fellow; during that
year he held a research fellowship at Harvard University and a medical assistantship at
Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. In 1949 he returned to the University of California
School of Medicine as an associate professor of physiology and was named professor of
physiology the following year; he held this position from 1950 until his retirement in
1976. Other titles held by Dr. Bennett during this period include Morris Hertzstein
Professor of Biology (1955-1973), Chairman of the Department of Physiology (1953-1966),
Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs (1965-1971 and 1973-1977) and Research
Enodcrinologist at the Hormone Research Laboratory (1971-1976).