Rufus Ivory Cole was born in Rowsburg, Ohio, on April 30, 1872. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1896 and attended the Johns Hopkins Medical School, graduating in 1899. At Hopkins he came under the influence of faculty members such as William Osler, William H. Welch, and Lewellys Barker. As a resident at Hopkins, Cole was in charge of a biological laboratory where he studied typhoid fever. He married Annie Hegeler in 1908, the same year he was appointed the Director of the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the first hospital in the U.S. devoted primarily to the investigation of disease. The Hospital itself opened in October 1910 with 50 beds. Cole remained at the Hospital until 1937. His medical research centered on problems relating to immunity to diseases of the respiratory system, particularly pneumonia. In retirement he wrote a two volume work titled Human History: The Seventeenth Century and the Stuart Family. Cole died on April 20, 1966.