University of Washington Professor of Medicine Walter E. Stamm was born in 1945. He graduated from Stanford University in 1967 and Harvard Medical School in 1971. He trained as a resident at the University of Washington (UW) from 1971 to 1973, and after three years at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta he returned to the University of Washington for the remainder of his career. At the UW he was a professor of medicine and served as Head of the School of Medicine's Division of Allergy and Infectious Disease. Stamm made many advances in diagnosing and treating upper-tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases. He was particularly known for his work clarifying the role of chlamydia trachomatis in causing pelvic inflammatory disease, which led to chlamydia control programs in the United States and Europe. Stamm died in 2009.