William H. Danforth ’48

Bill was born April 10, 1926, in St. Louis, Mo. He had consecutive but also somewhat concurrent careers in his hometown, with local, national, and international influence and achievement: as a medical school and university professor, founder of a food-plant research institute, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, and, as a philanthropist, head of the family’s Danforth Foundation. Bill was namesake of his grandfather who founded an animal feed business that became Ralston-Purina, of which Bill’s father, Donald 1920, was president.

A biology major, Bill graduated from Princeton in 1947. After his graduation from Harvard Medical School, he was a physician during the Korean War for a Navy destroyer group. Then it was back to St. Louis, where he became a member of Washington University’s medical school faculty, and, for 24 years starting in 1971, was chancellor of the university.

Bill and Elizabeth met while he was at Harvard and married in 1950. Elizabeth died in 2005. Bill died Sept. 16, 2020, at the family home in Ladue, Mo. He was 94. Bill is survived by his and Elizabeth’s daughter, Maebelle D. Reed, and son, David. Their daughter Cynthia D. Prather died in 2017. Also surviving are 13 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.