Harry Eagle was an American physician and pathologist. He was born in New York City on 1905. He studied, and later worked, at Johns Hopkins University before moving on to the National Institutes of Health. For most of the next 20 years he did teaching and research at Johns Hopkins. He was the director of its Venereal Disease Research Laboratory and Laboratory of Experimental Therapeutics. He was also a commanding officer in the United States Public Health Service program at Johns Hopkins. He was president of the American Society of Microbiology in 1958. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Science, the country's highest scientific honour.