Saul Benison Papers

Saul Benison functioned as an advisor on numerous oral histories for various groups and institutions and was a distinguished oral history expert. He was born in New York City on November 2, 1920. He went to school at Queens College in 1941 and was a recipient of the K.S. Pinson Award in History. Soon after he served as a historian for the War Production Board and then entered Columbia University’s graduate history program where he received his PhD. He specialized in the history of medicine and science but also prepared memoirs in American social history. This collection contains a lot of his work from when he was employed as historian for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. This foundation was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 to combat polio. His work in this area and other areas earned him awards such as the American Association for Medical History’s William H. Welch Medal for distinguished achievement in medical historiography. Later in his career in 1961 he joined the University of Cincinnati’s Department of History as a professor. He earned an impressive reputation and has an extensive history and medicine library. In 1990 he retired from the University of Cincinnati. On October 5, 2006 he died of pneumonia in a nursing home in Baltimore, Maryland.