Brigadier General George Miller Sternberg was a U.S. Army physician who is considered the first U.S. bacteriologist, having written Manual of Bacteriology . After he survived typhoid and yellow fever, Sternberg documented the cause of malaria , discovered the cause of lobar pneumonia , and confirmed the roles of the bacilli of tuberculosis and typhoid fever .
Sternberg was born at Hartwick Seminary, Otsego County, New York, where he spent most of his childhood. He was the eldest child of Levi Sternberg and Margaret Miller Stenberg. His father was a Lutheran clergyman, was descended from a German family from the Palatinate, which had settled in the Schoharie Valley in the early years of the 18th century. His father later became principal of Hartwick Seminary in Oneonta, New York, where he atarted his education. His mother, Margaret Levering Sternberg, was the daughter of George B. Miller, also a Lutheran clergyman and professor of theology at the seminary, which was a Lutheran school. As an eldest child of a large family and he was given adult responsibilities from an early age. He interrupted his studies at the seminary with a year of work in a bookstore in Cooperstown and three years of teaching in nearby rural schools. During his last year at Hartwick he was an instructor in mathematics, chemistry, and natural philosophy. He was at the s
Source: Wikipedia