Burton R. Andersen M.D. received his BS from the University of Illinois in 1955.  In 1957 he was awarded an M.S. and M.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago.  He interned at Minneapolis General Hospital then completed his training in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago from 1958 to 1961.  At the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland he was a Clinical Associate from 1961 to 1964.  He joined the Department of Medicine faculty of the University of Rochester in New York in 1964 and left there in 1967 to join the Department of Microbiology at Northwestern University in Chicago.  In 1970 he left Northwestern to take a position in the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  He became a Professor in 1975 and was named the Chief of Infectious Diseases in 1986 and remained in that position till 1999.  He is now a Professor Emeritus but continues to work at the University of Illinois in Infectious Disease and as the Research Subject Advocate in the Clinical Research Center.  He has published one book on the history of medicine in ancient Mesopotamia and is currently working on a second.