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Colonel
Peter B. Carter
Permanent Professor 1967–1975
B.S., Oregon State University
M.D., University of Oregon
Pete Carter, the Academy’s 22nd Permanent Professor, was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1932. He received his pre-medical training at Oregon State University, Corvallis, graduating in 1954. He earned his medical degree from the University of Oregon School of Medicine, Portland, in 1958. Pete joined the Air Force while still a medical student and began his active duty as a Flight Surgeon at McChord AFB, WA. In 1964 he was transferred to the Air Force Academy Hospital where he was Chief of Internal Medicine and later Chief of Medical Services. Selected as a Permanent Professor in 1967, he was the first (and as of this date, the only) medical doctor to serve as a Permanent Professor. Since he was then a major, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned for one year in the Department of Chemistry and Physiology. In this period, he also served for five months as Medical Advisor to the Air Force Advisory Group Commander and Surgeon, Vietnamese Air Force, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Vietnam. In July 1968 he was promoted to colonel and appointed Head of the new Department of Life Sciences. In this capacity, he was the driving force behind establishing the Academy’s pre-medical program. In 1971 he oversaw the merger of two separate departments to form the Department of Life and Behavioral Sciences. Pete Carter resigned from the Air Force in the Spring of 1975, following which his department was divided, with the Biology portion returning to Chemistry and the Psychology portion reemerging as the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership.
After the Air Force, Dr. Pete Carter built a long career as an internal medicine physician in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He was semi-retired but still actively working with the staff at Avera United Clinic at the time of his death. He died while a patient in the crash of Aberdeen’s flight for life helicopter in 2002.