Howard Taylor Ricketts

Howard Taylor Ricketts (1871-1910) was an American pathologist after whom the Rickettsiaceae family and the Rickettsiales are named.

In the earlier part of his career, Ricketts undertook research at Northwestern University on blastomycosis and later at the University of Chicago on and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Ricketts and his assistant discovered that the agent that carried the bacillus for the latter was the Rocky Mountain wood tick (the American dog tick is also a carrier). Ricketts was devoted to his research and, on several occasions, injected himself with a pathogen in order to measure its effects.

In 1909, Ricketts became interested in typhus due to an outbreak in Mexico City and the apparent similarity of the disease to spotted fever. Somewhat ironically, days after isolating the organism that he believed caused typhus, he himself died of the disease.