John W. Churchman (1877-1937) was born in Burlington, New Jersey, and died in Amityville, New York. He earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1902 and began his career there in bacteriology and surgery. In 1911 he became a professor at Yale University, later becoming the head of its surgery department. During World War I he served as the medical chief of a French military hospital, and from 1917 to 1918 he served as president of the Connecticut Medical Reserve Corps examining board. In 1925 he became the director of the experimental therapeutics laboratory at Cornell Medical College. Churchman won the Alvarenga Prize of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the New York Academy of Science. He was also a member of several scientific organizations. In April 1904, Churchman published an article entitled "Christian Science" in The Atlantic Monthly, challenging it on several scientific and philosophical grounds. Mary Baker Eddy's student Alfred Farlow published a lengthy response to Churchman's article, entitled "A Critic Answered," in the Somerville Journal which was reprinted in the June 1904 issue of The Christian Science Journal.

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