Lawrence Kilham

Lawrence Kilham (10 August 1910, in Brookline, Massachusetts – 21 September 2000, in Lyme, New Hampshire), was a physician, virologist, amateur ornithologist, and nature writer. He is credited as the discoverer of K virus and, with L. J. Olivier, Kilham rat virus (1959), the first protoparvovirus identified.

Kilham received his bachelor's degree in 1932 and his M.S. in biology in 1935 from Harvard University and then his M.D. in 1940 from Harvard Medical School. As an intern in Cleveland, Ohio, he married an intern, Jane K. Kilham (1912–1992). Early in WW II, husband and wife went to England, and after D-Day Lawrence Kilham served in field hospitals as a doctor in the Third Army under Patton. In 1945, Lawrence Kilham returned to graduate school to do research on virology and to teach epidemiology. He was a virology researcher from 1949 to 1960 and in 1961 he became a professor at Dartmouth Medical School (Geisel School of Medicine), retiring there as professor emeritus in 1978. He was predeceased by his wife He was survived by three sons, Benjamin, Michael, and Joshua, and a daughter, Phoebe.