Alexander Hodgdon Stevens (1789–1869), physician, was a native of New York City who received a B.A. from Yale College in 1807 and an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1811. After a visit to Europe, during which he honed his medical skills in England and France and was detained by British warships both going and coming, he returned to the United States. Stevens had a long association with the New York Hospital, and he was professor of surgery at Queen’s College (later Rutgers University), 1815–26. He held similar faculty positions at the College of Physicians and Surgeons (later merged with Columbia University), 1826–44; served as one of its trustees, 1820–26 and 1843–55; and was its president, 1843–55. Stevens eventually developed an interest in agriculture, and he was the second president of the American Medical Association, 1848–49 (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Samuel W. Francis, Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Living New York Surgeons [1866], 133–8; Hartford Connecticut Courant, 23 Sept. 1807; Milton Halsey Thomas, Columbia University Officers and Alumni 1754–1857 [1936], 227–8; New York Times, 2 Apr. 1869).