DIXON, SAMUEL GIBSON, M. D., LL. D., Bryn Mawr, Pa., was born of Quaker parentage in the city of Philadelphia in the family homestead below Bartram’s Botanical Gardens, March 23, 1851. His early education was received at the Friends’ Schools in that city and was supplemented by private tutors, by whom he was prepared for Harvard College. His health failing, however, he went abroad for recreation and study. Returning home he set himself to acquire a thorough knowledge of business principles, taking a course at the Mercantile College. On the conclusion of this he studied conveyancing under the late Edward Bedlock of Philadelphia. He then studied law in the office of his brother, Edwin Saunders Dixon, Esq., attended the law course of the University of Pennsylvania, and was admitted to practice at the bar of Philadelphia June 30, 1877, continuing in the active practice of that profession for ten years. The practice of law left him with trusteeships of importance which have necessarily kept him well to the front in affairs. Under the stress of desk and office work his health again failed, and his tastes inclining him to make a hobby of scientific medicine he matriculated in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, from which he was graduated with honor in 1886. While still an undergraduate, however, he received the unusual compliment of an appointment by the trustees to the position of Assistant Demonstrator of Physiology. During his last year in the medical school he suffered from a serious attack of typhoid fever, which made a foreign trip again desirable in the opinion of his physicians. Being greatly interested in the infant science of bacteriology, as soon as his strength permitted, he entered the Bacteriological Department of King’s College, London, from which he was graduated. He also took a course in the College of State Medicine, London, under Professor Klein, and it was while prosecuting observations under that master in bacteriology that he made the discovery of branched forms of tubercle bacilli hitherto unnoticed. He also studied under Pottenkofer, in Munich, and made a careful study of the methods of filtration of water and disposition of sewage then in vogue in the capitals of Great Britain and Europe. Returning to Philadelphia in 1888, his alma mater recognized the value of his attainments by appointing him the first Professor of Hygiene in the newly created chair in the Medical Department, and also Dean of the Auxiliary Department of Medicine. While in this position he embraced the opportunity to establish the first Laboratory of Hygiene in the University. Two years later he resigned these positions to accept the appointment of Professor of Bacteriology and Microscopical Technology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, of which institution he became Executive Curator in 1892 and President in 1896.