ABSTRACT
SAMUEL WILLIAM BECKER was born on July 11, 1894 in Benton Harbor, Michigan. As a boy his interest was in radio and electrical engineering, but following his father’s wishes he earned an M.A. and M.D. from the University of Michigan in 1920. His dermatologic training was under John H.Stokes at the Mayo Clinic and Bruno Bloch in Zurich, Switzerland. He returned to be the first head of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Chicago, where he remained for 15 years. During this period he pioneered in instructing the public about the threat of syphilis with his 1937 book, Ten Million Americans Have It. By 1940 his classic textbook, Modern Dermatology and Syphilology had appeared. All this time he was instrumental in founding The Society for Investigative Dermatology and establishing the first dermatopathology laboratory in Chicago. He was a master teacher. No patient of his ever left without an awareness of the physiologic factors in psychosomatic disease. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” could have been his mantra. No resident ever left without an appreciation of his imagery that seborrheic keratosis is the benign equivalent of basal cell carcinoma.
