American pathologist. The son of a freed slave, Lewis became the first African-American associate professor at the University of Chicago in 1922 and spent the next 20 years studying racial differences in relation to medicine. In the meantime, he conducted research on immunology, for which he earned a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1926.
Lewis's research on race culminated in the 1942 publication of The Biology of the Negro, a lengthy text summarizing the scientific literature on the demographic, anatomical, physiological and biochemical characteristics of the black population. While Lewis was deeply interested in biological differences between the races, he argued against the viewpoint that black people were biologically inferior.
"Negro Higher Education in 1921-1922". The Crisis. Vol. 23 no. 3. The Crisis Publishing Company. July 1922. pp. 108.
