Barry Wood ( American football ) William Barry Wood , Jr . ( May 4 , 1910 - March 9 , 1971 ) , was an American football player and medical educator . Wood played quarterback for Harvard during the 1929 - 1931 seasons and was one of the most prominent football players of his time . He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980 . An accomplished student as well as a gifted athlete , Wood went on to a highly successful academic career in medicine and microbiology at Washington University in St . Louis and Johns Hopkins University . Early life . Wood was born in Milton , Massachusetts . His father was a Harvard graduate and trustee . He attended Milton Academy . After graduating , he spent a year at The Thacher School in California , then entered Harvard in 1928 . Athletic career . A multitalented athlete , Wood earned a total of ten varsity letters at Harvard : three each in football , hockey , and baseball , plus one in tennis . Wood first made his national reputation as a sophomore in 1929 , when he led Harvard to a comeback 20 - 20 tie with Army : Wood threw a 40 - yard touchdown pass and drop - kicked two extra points , including the kick to tie the game at the end . Michigan ' s Fielding H . Yost called Wood in 1929 the greatest passer he had ever seen . In Wood ' s senior year , 1931 , he was team captain . In one noted game , Harvard came back from a 13 - 0 deficit to beat Army 14 - 13 as Wood led two touchdown drives , and made two crucial defensive plays ( a touchdown - saving tackle and an interception ) to save the win . He appeared on the cover of the November 23 , 1931 issue of " Time " magazine . He was the consensus first - team quarterback as selected by most of the 1931 College Football All - America Team s . Wood was at the center of a controversy involving the famous sportscaster Ted Husing . Commenting on Wood ' s poor play in the 1931 Harvard - Dartmouth game , Husing opined , " Wood is certainly playing a putrid game today . " Two plays later , Wood threw the winning touchdown pass in Harvard ' s 7 - 6 win . Harvard fans protested Husing ' s use of the word " putrid " , and the Harvard athletic director notified Husing ' s boss , William Paley at CBS , that Husing would be banned from broadcasting Harvard home games . Wood was well known for his role in Harvard ' s rivalry with Yale , which was led by its own three - sport star , Albie Booth . In the words of the 1931 " Time " article , " the essence of Harvard football this year , as Booth has been the essence of Yale football since his sophomore year , is William Barry Wood Jr . , called " Barry " by sportswriters and " Bill " by friends . " When the two met for the first time as freshmen , Yale ' s freshman team beat Harvard ' s 7 - 6 . Harvard beat Yale in Wood ' s sophomore and junior years . The Crimson won the 1929 game 10 - 6 as Wood drop - kicked a field goal and an extra point . Booth , suffering from a leg injury , did not start and had a second - quarter field goal attempt blocked , although he did later throw a touchdown pass for Yale ' s only points ; Booth also nearly took a second - half kickoff return 96 yards for the potential winning score , before Harvard ' s Hall of Fame center Ben Ticknor managed to tackle him from behind by grabbing his sweater . In 1930 , the Harvard defense stymied Booth while Wood threw two touchdown passes , leading Harvard to a 13 - 0 win . In 1931 , both Harvard and Yale entered " The Game " undefeated for the first time since 1913 . Neither team scored until Booth kicked a late - game drop kick field goal to win 3 - 0 , for Wood ' s only varsity football loss to Yale in three games . Wood and Booth picked up their rivalry in the spring , and Booth had the last word , hitting a two - out grand slam home run to beat Wood and the Harvard baseball team 4 - 3 . Wood was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980 . Medical career . Wood was also a leader off the field , praised as a model student - athlete by celebrated writers of the day such as Westbrook Pegler and Damon Runyon . He was class president as a freshman and student council president as a senior , and he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1932 . After college , he went on to study medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore , Maryland . In 1932 , he married Mary Lee Hutchins ; to earn money for medical school , he wrote a book entitled " What Price Football - A Player ’ s Defense of the Game " . Wood earned his medical degree in 1936 . He was a National Research Council Fellow in bacteriology at Harvard , then returned to Hopkins in 1940 as a faculty member . In 1942 , at the age of 32 , he became head of the Department of Medicine at Washington University in St . Louis and physician - in - charge at Barnes Hospital . He remained in St . Louis for 13 years , then returned to Hopkins in 1955 as vice president of the university and hospital , and as a professor of microbiology . In 1959 he became director of the department of microbiology , and remained in that post until his death in 1971 . Beginning in his undergraduate days , Wood had developed an interest in the role of leukocytes that continued through his career . Wood was an early participant in the Army Epidemiological Board . He was part of a group that published an early paper on penicillin in 1943 . He worked on the mechanism of recovery from pneumonia and was noted for early work on surface phagocytosis , research into the pathogenesis of fever , and endogenous pyrogen ( now known as interleukin - 1 ) . Wood wrote more than 125 papers and several books , including co - authorship of a microbiology textbook . He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1959 . He served as president or a board member of numerous professional organizations , including the Central Society for Clinical Research , the American Society for Clinical Investigation , and the Association of American Physicians . He was a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers , the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation , and the President ' s Science Advisory Committee . He received a Distinguished Achievement Award from " Modern Medicine " and a posthumous Kober Medal from the Association of American Physicians . Wood died in 1971 . Shortly before his death , an interview with Wood was videotaped for a documentary motion picture in the " Leaders in American Medicine " series produced by the medical honor society , Alpha Omega Alpha . The Wood Basic Science Building at Hopkins is named in his honor .