Solomon Carter Fuller

Who was Solomon Carter Fuller?

Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller was a pioneering African-American psychiatrist who made significant contributions to the study of Alzheimer's disease. He was born in Liberia, the son of a previously enslaved African who had purchased his freedom and emigrated there. Fuller graduated with an MD in 1897 from Boston University School of Medicine, which as a homeopathic institution was open to both African-American and women students. He pursued further research at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Munich, Germany. He spent the majority of his career practicing at Westborough State Mental Hospital in Westborough, Massachusetts. While there, he performed his ground-breaking research on the physical changes to the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

When the Veterans Administration opened the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center after World War I with an entirely black staff, Fuller was instrumental in recruiting and training black psychiatrists for key positions. In the early 1970s, the American Psychiatric Association established a Solomon Carter Fuller award lecture at its annual meetings.

For most of his life, Fuller lived in nearby Framingham, Massachusetts, with his wife, the famous sculptor Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller.