Virology Division News
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Obituary In Memoriam William C. Reeves (1916–2004) e have lost one of the great epidemiologists, entomologists, and teachers of our time. William W C. Reeves, Professor of Epidemiology and Dean Emeritus of the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, died on September 19, 2004, after a brief illness. For those of us fortunate to have been inspired, educated and amused by Bill Reeves, he is irreplaceable. Born in Riverside, California, on December 2, 1916, Bill Reeves attended secondary schools there and then the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned degrees in Entomology (B.S., 1938) and Medical Entomology and Parasitology (Ph.D., 1943). After his undergraduate years, Bill worked as a forest entomologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and during World War II he worked as a civilian advisor to the military, investigating mosquito-borne viruses in the U.S. and, overseas and following the war, continued to consult for the military regarding viral diseases and medical entomology. He returned to the University of California, Berkeley as a teaching assistant in the Department of Entomology and worked as a research associate at the Hooper Foundation at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1949, Bill earned a degree in Epidemiology (M.P.H.) and never left employment there again. Over the years he rose from lecturer to Professor to Dean of the School of Public Health. Even though he retired officially in 1987, Bill remained as Professor, arriving at his office by 7 am four days a week and continuing to teach classes, advise students, telephone former students and long-time associates, and serve on various committees advising various governmental entities and prodding us all to do better. Bill Reeves was unique. His wide-ranging travels afforded him a remarkably insightful international perspective, and his work in both the field and the laboratory honed an equally broad scientific perspective. He was a patriot and a long-standing friend of the military, serving for many years as a member of the U.S. Armed Forces Epidemiological Board and as an expert consultant to the Surgeon General of the Army. Bill also was a consultant to the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and consultant to various programs within the CDC. He was a member of the Viral Diseases Study Section of the U.S. Public Health Service, chaired a U.S. National Institutes of Health committee on reagent production and led, or was a member of, various other state, national and international committees, helping to establish plans to implement new programs or to revise outmoded ones. The list of his advisory committees is very long and impressive and his roles in these programs provided Bill with a penetrating international perspective of public health; or was it the other
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way around? Was it the intellect and insight of Bill Reeves that dragged the rest of us in the direction we should have been going all along? Was Bill Reeves the result, the guiding light, or
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