Allen Steere

Allen C. Steere is a professor of rheumatology at Harvard University and previously at Yale University. Steere is credited with discovering and naming Lyme disease, and he published almost 200 scholarly articles on Lyme disease between 1977 and 2007. At a ceremony in Hartford, Connecticut in 1998, Governor John G. Rowland declared September 24 to be "Allen C. Steere Day." In 1975, the Connecticut State Health Department received complaints from Polly Murray, a mother living in the small town of Lyme, Connecticut. Two of her children had been diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, but she knew of others in the area with similar symptoms. An epidemic intelligence officer assigned to the Connecticut state health department, David R....