Charles Sidney Burwell was born in Denver, Colorado on April 10, 1893 and died at his summer home in Ipswich, Massachusetts on September 3, 1967. A distinguished graduate of Allegheny College and Harvard Medical School, he served as Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt from 1928 to 1935, as Dean of the Harvard Medical School from 1935 to 1949, as Research Professor of Medicine from 1949 to 1955, and as the first Samuel A. Levine Professor of Medicine from 1955 until his retirement from Harvard in 1959.

After graduation from medical school Dr. Burwell trained at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He then joined the American Red Cross to serve in the devastated areas of Latvia and the Balkan States. He next completed a research fellowship with Dr. Paul D. White. It was this association that created Burwell's life-long interest in diseases of the heart and circulation.

Burwell was a second generation Oslerian, having been a student of Henry A. Christian, chairman of the Department of Medicine at Harvard. Sidney Burwell came to Vanderbilt in 1924 as Associate Professor of Medicine. Dr. Burwell spent 1924 in Europe, studying pathology in Vienna, and observing teaching and research programs at numerous medical schools on the Continent and in England. When he returned to Vanderbilt, he quickly established himself as a clinician, teacher, and investigator. In 1928, he succeeded Canby Robinson as chairman of the Department of Medicine and continued in the chairmanship until 1935, when he became dean of Harvard.