Charles Henry Southwick

Charles Southwick passed away at home on July 12, 2015 at age 86. He was born in Wooster, Ohio on August 28, 1928, to Arthur F. Southwick and Faye M. Southwick. As a youth, he worked on productive truck, wheat, and potato farms of northern Ohio, and drove a local bus route. He was active in Eagle Scouting, camping, and Red Cross Life Saving, and swimming. He graduated from the College of Wooster in 1949, having met his wife of 63 years, Heather Milne Beck, also a graduated from the College of Wooster. Together Chuck and Heather attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Chuck receiving his M.S. degree in wildlife biology in1951, and his Ph.D. in zoology in 1953, while Heather received her Master’s degree in social work in 1953.

Chuck has had a career of teaching, field research, and extensive international travel for 60 years, that has included Postdoctoral Research Fellowships at Oxford University in England, Aligarh University in India, and Stanford University in California. He has held teaching and research faculty positions at Hamilton College in New York, Ohio University, Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, and the University of Colorado. He came to CU in 1979 as Chairman of the Department of EPO Biology.

His areas of research have been animal population ecology, primatology, environmental quality, global ecology, and animal-human disease relationships. These studies have taken him and Heather to 90 countries around the world on more than 85 research expeditions to Latin America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia, including 50 consecutive years of field research in India and Southeast Asia. He has published more than 180 research papers, 8 books, and has presented numerous talks at scientific meetings. Much of this work has focused on commensal animals, wild animals living in close association with humans. This has involved problems ranging from the conservation of endangered species to management of species considered pests. These research programs have extended to broader concerns of agriculture, human ecology, public health, and the zoonotic sources of human disease.

Dr. Southwick served as Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins International Center for Medical Research in Calcutta in the mid-1960’s, and in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s with the U.S. Army medical Research Unit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during the Vietnam War. Both positions involved work on tropical diseases affecting civilians and U.S. troops. He has been a Consultant to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Pan American Health Organization, the U.S. National Academy of Science, the National Science Foundation, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University, and the University of Puerto Rico. He was a Member of the Governor’s Science Advisory Committee for the State of Maryland in the 1970’s, and he served on the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society from 1979 to 2001.

His Honors include Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, the Mateer Biology Prize, the Faculty Teaching Award at the University of Colorado, the Distinguished Primatologist Award of the American Society of Primatologists, Fellow of the American Society for the Advancement of Science, the Southwick Award to Young Primatologists of Developing Nations of the International Primatological Society, and Special Recognitions from the Wildlife Institute of India, and the Indo-U.S. Primate Project. He is a member of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Boulder.

He was predeceased by his brother, Arthur Southwick Jr., of Ann Arbor, Michigan, by his parents, Arthur and Faye Southwick of Wooster, and his step mother Gladys, of Wooster. He is survived by Heather, his beloved wife of 63 years, his son Steven, of Portland, Maine, his daughter, Karen, of White Plains, New York, and seven grandchildren.

Services will be held at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Boulder at 11:00 am, July 21st. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to Population Connection (www.populationconnection.org , Conservation International (www.conservation.org), or Emergency Family Assistance Association of Boulder (www.efaa.org).