Tom Davis

Sir Thomas Robert Alexander Harries Davis (11 June 1917 – 23 July 2007) was a Cook Islands statesman and medical researcher. He served as Prime Minister of the Cook Islands from 1978 to March 1983, and again from November 1983 to July 1987. He also worked as a medical officer, and as a medical researcher for the US Army and NASA. He was a founder of the Cook Islands Voyaging Society and constructed and voyaged in several replica vaka, including Tākitumu and Te Au o Tonga. Early life and education Davis was born on the island of Rarotonga and educated at King's College, Auckland. He was the first Cook Islands medical graduate in New Zealand, finishing his studies at the University of Otago in 1945. He applied for the position of Medical Officer in the Cook Islands, and after multiple rejections due to racism from colonial officials, was eventually appointed. As Medical Officer, he reorganised the country's health system, establishing a nursing school and taking measures to control tuberculosis. In 1948, after completing a post-graduate course in tropical medicine at the University of Sydney, he was appointed Chief Medical Officer. In 1952, he was invited to study at Harvard University in the United States. He made the journey with his wife and children in a yacht, via Peru and the Panama Canal. The journey was documented by his wife, Lydia Davis, in a series of articles published in New Zealand newspapers. She reported that they were "welcomed at Boston like heroes". At Harvard Davis completed a Master of Public Health, before joining the United States Department of Nutrition and worked for the US armed forces. In 1958 he was appointed Director of the Division of Environmental Medicine at the US Army's Fort Knox medical research laboratory. He later joined NASA to work on the space programme before working for Arthur D. Little as a research physician.