John Shaw Billings (1838–1913)

American army surgeon and library organiser. BA, Miami College, Ohio, 1857; MD, Medical College of Ohio, 1860. Surgeon, hospital administrator, and medical statistician in the US Army in the Civil War and after. A leading expert on hospital design and administration. Officer in charge of the library of the surgeon general’s office; compiled the Index catalogue and the Index medicus of the library. First director of the New York Public Library, 1896.