David Hendricks Bergey was an American bacteriologist, born December 27, 1860 in Skippack, Pennsylvania, died September 5, 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied at University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine degrees in 1884. He practiced medicine until 1893. He then joined the university's hygiene laboratory, where he taught hygiene and bacteriology. He led the laboratory from 1929 until his retirement in 1932. He was the first doctor to isolate the bacterium Actinomyces from a human being, in 1907.