Swanker, Wilson A(bbs) (b. March 29, 1909, Schenectady, New York, USA – d. September 9, 1991, Annapolis, Maryland, USA), served between 1957 and 1961 as the fourth chief physician of the American Hospital.
After graduating from Purdue University, he completed his medical education at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and opened a clinic in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. During World War II, he served as a military doctor in Europe. After the war, he worked in the plastic surgery field in New York. In January 1957, he was appointed as chief physician of the American Hospital in Istanbul. After serving for four years, he resigned in January 1962 due to several reasons, including “private family circumstances, wanting to be involved in projects unrelated to the hospital, failing to secure the full support and trust of the hospital’s board of directors and being unable to formulate his own vision for the future of the American Hospital.”
He later returned to Washington and worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Following his retirement in 1972, Dr. Swanker took up voluntary work in the seashells section at the Smithsonian Institute Museum of Natural History.
His book Anomalies of Infants and Children, written together with David McCullagh Mayer, was published in 1958.