William Rufus Redden (1881–1952) was an American public health physician.
Career Redden graduated B.A. from Bates College in 1906 and worked as a science teacher at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia, before deciding to pursue a medical career.Obituary in New York Times, 11 August 1952. He graduated MD from Harvard Medical School in 1917 and served at Chelsea Naval Hospital 1918–1919, receiving the Navy Cross for bringing down the death rate there during the 1918–1920 flu pandemic.Elizabeth Gehrman, In the Grip of a Disease, Harvard Medicine: The Magazine of Harvard Medical School, Spring 2020.
Redden went on to serve as Director of Medical and Health Activities of the American National Red Cross during relief efforts in response to the 1925 Tri-State tornado and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927,Pete Daniel, Deep'n as It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood (University of Arkansas Press, 1996), p. 127. resigning in 1928 due to ill health."Announcement", Journal of the American Medical Association, 91 (1928), p. 1044. He contributed to the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1929–1930) and in 1931 he became Director of First Aid for the New York Chapter of the American Red Cross.The Red Cross Courier, 11-12 (1931), p. 632. He also taught evening classes at Hunter College,Hunter College, Bulletin of Information, Evening and Extension Sessions (1937), p. 14. and during the Second World War provided US Coast Guard medical training through Columbia University.
He died at St Mary's Hospital, Brooklyn, on 10 August 1952.
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