At the 2020 Convocation, graduating MD student Chrstine Gummerson recieved the W. Bruce Fye Prize in History of Medicine for her essay “Protecting Health through Pollution Control:  How Clinical Perspectives on London’s Great Smog of 1952 Informed the Clean Air Act of 1956.”

Established in 2018, the W. Bruce Fye Prize in the History of Medicine is awarded annually for the best unpublished essay on a medical historical topic written by a member of the graduating M.D. class of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The prize is made possible by the generosity of W. Bruce Fye (Johns Hopkins BA ‘68, MD ‘72, MA in History of Medicine, ‘78), a prominent cardiologist and historian of medicine who is the past president of the American College of Cardiology, the American Osler Society, and the American Association for the History of Medicine, and who served as Professor of Medicine and History of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic.  In a long and wide-ranging career as a clinician-historian, Fye’s books and articles have consistently demonstrated the relevance of historical thinking to medical research, training, practice, and policy.  He established this prize in 2018 to encourage Johns Hopkins medical students to gain experience in historical research and writing and to appreciate how the history of medicine provides valuable perspective on current and future challenges and opportunities in medical practice, education, and research.