David Mitchell Kydd ’24

Dr. David M. Kydd died in Cooperstown, N.Y., Apr. 20, 1995. He had been in declining health for several months.

David had a long and distinguished career as a physician, medical researcher, and teacher. He retired to Cooperstown in 1968, having served as prof. of medicine and assoc. dean of the College of Medicine at the Downstate Medical Center of S.U.N.Y. at Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn. Before his S.U.N.Y. appointment, Dr. Kydd had been an assoc. prof. of medicine at Yale Medical School. He was one of the first to apply flame photometry systematically to the analysis of electrolytes in the blood. He was an authority on metabolic diseases. Always courteous, never arrogant, he touched the lives of generations of students and grateful patients.

Born May 17, 1903, in Jersey City, N.J., he attended Riverdale School, Mt. Hermon, and Newark Academy. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1928, joined Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown in 1934 as a staff physician and research associate and remained there, with an interruption for war service, until 1948, when he returned to Yale.

During WWII, David was assigned to Ashburn General Hospital in McKinney, Tex. He rose to command the hospital, and left the Army as a lt. col. in 1946.

He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Beatrice Ells; a son, Paul H.; and grandsons David M. and Andrew H.

The Class of 1924