Daniel Hale Williams

(1856 - 1931)

Surgeon

Daniel Hale Williams was the first person in the world to operate successfully on the human heart. He performed that feat in 1893 at Provident Hospital in Chicago and went on to perform other history making operations. In 1891 he founded Provident Hospital, the first hospital and training school for African American nurses and interns in the United States. Appointed by President Grover Cleveland to head Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., Dr. Williams established a nursing school there for African Americans. His papers were printed in their entirety in the Annals of Surgery and in abridged forms in the Chicago Medical Recorder and the Illinois Medical Journal.

Additional Information

Biography of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams from The Provident Foundation

Obituary in the Journal of the National Medical Association, vol. XXIII, no. 4