Mayo, William Worrall (1819–1911)

English-born US physician and politician. As a prominent physician and surgeon based in Rochester, Minnesota, he helped build St Mary's Hospital there after a destructive cyclone (1885). In 1889 he and his two sons, Charles and William Mayo, founded a clinic at that hospital that soon became a surgical centre for the region and gradually a surgical hospital and teaching centre of world renown, pioneering medical group practice. It was named the Mayo Clinic in 1903.

Mayo was born in Manchester, England, and emigrated to the USA in 1845. After gaining his MD from the University of Missouri, he settled in the Minnesota Territory in 1855. William, Sr, was also active in politics, helping to organize the Minnesota Territory as a state in 1858, serving as mayor of Rochester for several terms, and as a state senator. In 1862 he served as an army surgeon during the uprising of the Sioux.