William Bennett Bean (November 8, 1909 the Philippines – March 1, 1989) [1] was an internist, medical historian, teacher and collector.

In 1980, he retired from the Institute and returned to Iowa City as Sir William Osler Professor Emeritus.

Bean notes, "The most spectacular results we saw were in the 38th Infantry Division in Luzon, who had been fighting the Japanese for four and a half months, subsisting on the improved C-ration.

In 1941, Bean began a medical self-experiment when he was unable to find information about the speed of growth of human nails or the factors that influenced it, such as being ill; he would regularly mark his thumbnail with a sharp glass, and record the time & distance the scratches traveled before disappearing.

Long an admirer and follower of Sir William Osler's philosophies and techniques, Bean rarely turned down an invitation to speak or be a visiting professor.

In his 1974 Archives of Internal Medicine festschrift, he was described as:"a true renaissance man: an articulate clinician, a scholar of the classics, a masterful teller of tales, and a prodigious writer of stories."

For over thirty years, Bean served as editor for fifteen journals, most notably the Archives of Internal Medicine.