[1] His parents were Romanta Wells, a partner in a wholesale drug company, and Emma Townsend Tuttle.
[1] Wells graduated in 1895 from Yale University, where he studied chemistry under Russell Henry Chittenden and Lafayette Mendel.
[4] During his fellowship, he worked alongside Howard T. Ricketts and was awarded the Benjamin Rush Medal for a paper on the thyroid gland.
He led the Department of Pathology and from 1911 until his retirement also headed the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute for Medical Research.
For his efforts fighting famine and disease, Wells was awarded the Order of the Star of Romania by the king.