John H. Yardley

John Howard Yardley (June 7, 1926 - December 7, 2011) was an American pathologist known for his work in gastrointestinal pathology. He worked at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1954 until his retirement in 2006. Yardley served as Baxley Professor of Pathology and director of the Department of Pathology from 1988 to 1992. He is regarded as one of the founders of the field of gastrointestinal pathology.

Early life and education

Yardley was born in Columbia, South Carolina. He graduated from Western Reserve High School in Cleveland in 1944 and served in the U.S. Navy for two years. He then attended Birmingham Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, graduating in 1949 with a degree in chemistry. Yardley earned his M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1953.

Career

Yardley authored more than 120 articles and 20 book chapters, and edited the monograph The Gastrointestinal Tract (1977, Williams and Wilkins). He was one of the founders of the Gastrointestinal Pathology Society. In the 1970s, he established a fellowship in gastrointestinal and liver pathology at Hopkins, which was later endowed and named the John H. Yardley Fellowship in Gastrointestinal Pathology.

Yardley made groundbreaking observations on Whipple's disease of the gastrointestinal tract and helped define the current classification system for neoplastic dysplasia in the colon and esophagus.