physiologist, pathologist, and author, was born in Shawneetown, Illinois, to John and Cordelia Lewis. His father, a former slave, and his mother had both graduated from Berea College in Kentucky, and earned their livelihoods as schoolteachers. Not surprisingly therefore, Lewis was encouraged from a young age to excel in school and to obtain as much education as possible. Instead of attending his parents' alma mater, he entered the University of Illinois, where he studied biology and physiology and received a BS degree in 1911 and an MA in 1912. Three years later, he completed his doctoral work at the University of Chicago to become the first African American to receive a PhD in Physiology from an American university. In 1917 the same year he received an MD from Chicago s Rush Medical College he was also named a professor of physiology at the University ...
