Born in
Westminster, Maryland the son of Lewis K. Woodward, Sr. and grandson of Lewis Woodward, Theodore E. Woodward is the patriarch of one of Maryland's large medical families, consisting of his wife, Celeste L. Woodward, his sons, William E. Woodward and R. Craig Woodward, and his daughter, Celeste L. Woodward. After his early education at the West End School and the Westminster Elementary and
High School, he attended
Franklin and Marshall College where he graduated in 1934. He received his medical degree from the
University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1938. After a two-year rotating internship at the
University of Maryland Hospital, he trained in
internal medicine and
gastroenterology at the
Henry Ford Hospital in
Detroit, all in preparation to enter practice in
Carroll County, Maryland. Woodward entered the service of the
United States Army in January 1941, just prior to the outbreak of
World War II. During the ensuing five years, he served in various medical units and with the United States Typhus Fever Commission with assignments in
North Africa,
Italy,
England,
France,
New Guinea and offshore islands, and the
Philippine Islands. Woodward authored the history of the U.S. Armed Forces Epidemiological Board and Commissions, which fostered the development of many advances in military medicine, with lasting benefits for civilian public health and disease prevention. Following discharge from military service in June 1946, Woodward entered
private practice. In 1948, he was appointed as a full-time Associate Professor of Medicine at the
University of Maryland School of Medicine. In June 1954, he was appointed to the Chair of Medicine, a position which he held until 1981, at the time of his retirement. Woodward died in
Baltimore aged 91. Woodward is credited having the "best claim" to coining, in the late 1940s, the
medical zebra aphorism (following the principle of
Occam's razor) paraphrased variously as: :
"When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." and :''"When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don't expect to see a zebra."'' ==See also==