Howard Atwood Kelly (1858-1943): founding Professor of Gynecology at Johns Hopkins Hospital and pioneer American radium therapist

To date no objective scientific medical biography has been published on Howard Atwood Kelly, one of America's foremost radium pioneers. He had become internationally known since 1889 as the founding Chief of the Gynecology Service at Johns Hopkins, well before the discovery of radium. He was also later to maintain his own hospital in Baltimore. He was a multifaceted man and his biography provides some fascinating reading about the treatment of gynaecological cancer in the USA at the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th century. An Appendix is included which contains extracts from Curtis Bumam's 1936 Janeway Memorial Lecture on 'Early Experiences with Radium' which was published (without quoting any references) in the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR). Bumam was probably the most important of Kelly's collaborators and he provides unique personal and scientific insights on Kelly and the trials (and) tribulations of obtaining and using radium in 1911. (author)