William F. Wells
William Firth Wells | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1886 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | September 8, 1963 (about 75) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Spouse | Mildred W. Wells |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1909) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Public health |
| Sub-discipline | Air sanitation |
| Institutions | Harvard School of Public Health University of Pennsylvania Johns Hopkins University |
| Notable ideas | Airborne transmission of measles and tuberculosis |
William Firth Wells (c. 1886 – September 8, 1963) was an American scientist and sanitary engineer. In his early career, he pioneered techniques for the aquaculture of oysters and clams. He is best known for his work on airborne infections. Wells and his wife, Dr. Mildred Weeks Wells, identified that measles and tuberculosis could be transmitted through the air via the nuclei of evaporated respiratory droplets. They developed the Wells curve to describe what happens to respiratory droplets after they have been expelled into the air, and Wells contributed to the Wells-Riley model to predict how the likelihood of infection varies with factors like room ventilation. In 1955, Wells published a major monograph Air Contagion and Air Hygiene synthesizing his lifetime of work on airborne disease transmission. Wells' work experienced a resurgence of interest after 2020, due to its relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic.