Rita R. Colwell
American microbiologist (born 1934)
Rita Rossi Colwell (born November 23, 1934) is an American environmental microbiologist and scientific administrator. Colwell holds degrees in bacteriology, genetics, and oceanography and studies infectious diseases. Colwell is the founder and Chair of CosmosID, a bioinformatics company. From 1998 to 2004, she was the 11th Director and 1st female Director of the National Science Foundation. She has served on the board of directors of EcoHealth Alliance since 2012.
Early life and education
Colwell was born on November 23, 1934, in Beverly, Massachusetts. Her parents, Louis and Louise Rossi, had eight children, Rita being the seventh child born into the Rossi household. Neither her mother nor her father were from scientific backgrounds. In 1956, Rita obtained a B.S. in bacteriology from Purdue University. She also received her M.S. in genetics from Purdue in 1957.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3433234. VIAF identifies the subject as 7561921. The Library of Congress control number is n83154705. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 1998, 2004 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rita R. Colwell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.