Hinton, William Augustus (1883-1959)

US bacteriologist and pathologist who worked on syphilis, in particular the development of the Hinton test.

Hinton was born in Chicago and studied at the University of Kansas and at Harvard. In 1915 he was made chief of the Wasserman Laboratory, and from 1918 he was an instructor at the Harvard Medical School. In 1949, he became the first black professor in the university's history.

Hinton developed a blood-serum test for syphilis which reduced the number of false positive diagnoses of the disease; in 1934, the US Public Health Service showed the Hinton test for syphilis to be the best. He wrote many scientific papers and his book Syphilis and its Treatment 1926 was the first medical textbook by a black American to be published.

Hinton was also the discoverer of the Davies-Hinton tests of blood and spinal fluid.