[1] He attended Newton High School and served in the Iowa National Guard from 1889 to 1901, where he was honorably discharged.

[8][9][10] From there he would join the University of Colorado Boulder as professor of physiology and pharmacology in 1921.

[1] Rees died from coronary artery disease at the age of 64 on May 25, 1945, in Denver, Colorado.

In his honor, the Regents of the University of Colorado established the Dean Maurice H. Rees Scholarship Fund.

[22] The scholarship is to be awarded to a single student each year who is entering the junior class of the school of medicine and "has shown, in addition to excellent scholarship during his first two years, those fine qualities of character and conscientious devotion to duty manifested by Dean Rees during his life time".