Lewis Wendell Hackett was born in Benicia, California, on December 14, 1884. He received an A.B. degree from Harvard University in 1905 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1912. He had become interested in public health administration and was appointed Assistant in Preventive Medicine and Hygiene at the university. During the following year, he organized and taught a laboratory and field course in hygiene. In 1913, he was granted the first Dr.P.H. degree given at Harvard Medical School. He was promoted to Instructor in Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, and in this capacity he helped to organize the first school for public health officers in the United States.

In 1914, Dr. Hackett was recruited for the field staff of the newly organized International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. His next 35 years were spent in 17 foreign countries investigating and combating hookworm disease and malaria and promoting public health. His first assignment was to conduct hookworm control demonstrations in Panama, British Honduras, and Guatemala. He also took charge of the Brazilian program in 1916 and expanded the work to include malaria control and the development of public health organizations.

The second major period of Dr. Hackett's employment began in 1924 when he took charge of the International Health Board project in Italy, where malaria was active in 38 of the 69 provinces. Control demonstrations were first organized in Sardinia. His use of Paris green as a larvacide was effective and was extended to other areas. He was instrumental in establishing a Central Malaria Experiment Station in Rome for the study of the anopheline mosquito. Of the six identified varieties of the maculipennis complex, two were confirmed as significant in the spread of malaria. In 1936, Dr. Hackett set up an Albanian field station for similar anopheline research. His book, "Malaria in Europe," published in 1937, summarized his studies to date. In 1939, his field laboratory work was extended to the Nile delta in Egypt. The Foundation closed its Rome office in 1940, when Italy entered the Second World War.

The remaining nine years of Dr. Hackett's service were spent as Director of the Rio de la Plata and Andean regional office in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he administered programs in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Uruguay. He found a generally unpromising situation, with the medical profession dominated by politics and the public health concept erroneous or non-existent. The war, lack of qualified personnel, and political instability combined to impede progress. A health center in Chile and nursing schools in Ecuador and Peru were the most solid achievements. The rise of a totalitarian government in Argentina curbed International Health Division activities there, and the Buenos Aires office was closed in September 1949.

At his retirement in December 1949, Dr. Hackett was an Associate Director of the IHD. He settled in Berkeley, where he became Visiting Professor of Public Health at the University of California and Editor-in-Chief of the "American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene." He was a member of many scientific and learned societies and served on commissions of the League of Nations and World Health Organization. Among his many honors were decorations from the governments of Italy, Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador. His many published articles included a contribution to the "Encyclopedia Britannica" on tropical medicine, and at his death on April 28, 1962, he was working on another book, a history of the International Health Division. Much of his material was subsequently included in Greer Williams' "The Plague Killers."