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In Memoriam: Francis L. Black, Ph.D.

Francis L. Black, Ph.D., professor emeritus of epidemiology (microbiology), died on January 27. Dr. Black was an expert in the biochemistry of viruses and was the third scientist to use the measles vaccine in humans. He was 81.

Dr. Black was born in Taipei, Taiwan, one of four children of Lucy and Donald Black, medical missionaries in Manchuko where he grew up under the rule of The Last Emperor, Pu-Yi.

Dr. Black received his undergraduate and masters degrees in chemistry at the University of British Columbia before beginning his Ph.D. studies at the University of Alberta. He transferred to the University of California at Berkeley where he worked with Nobel Prize winner, Wendell Stanley. Dr. Black received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in a record 26 months. He was a research assistant at the University of California, Berkeley and completed a research fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation Laboratories and a postdoctoral fellowship under Joseph L. Melnick, Ph.D.’39, a founder of modern virology, at Yale School of Medicine. He went on to assume a virologist position at the Laboratory of Hygiene in Ottawa.

In 1955, he returned to Yale, to the Departments of Microbiology and Epidemiology and Public Health (EPH). He remained at Yale for 41 years of his career. Dr. Black inaugurated and served as Head of the newly formed Division of Microbiology in EPH. When he retired as professor in 1996, he remained an active participant in the EPH community by continuing to lecture and serve on committees such as the EPH Dean’s Prize for Outstanding MPH Thesis. He was a member of the American Association of Immunologists, the Society for Experimental Biology, and the American Epidemiological Society. He served as an advisor to the Pan American Health Organization and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. He also was an active member ofa long standing Infectious Diseases Journal club that was enjoyed by faculty and postdoctoral fellows from Medicine, Pediatrics and EPH.

Dr. Black was well-respected amongst colleagues for his work with the measles virus. He pioneered the in-vitro cultivation of the virus and tested the efficacy of measles vaccines in susceptible populations in both the United States and abroad. His other contributions to his field included determining the factors that influence the age at which a child can be effectively vaccinated against measles in different parts of the world; determining the mode and persistence of HTLV-II, a cancer virus related to the AIDS virus; and studying the interaction of genetics and infection. He studied the impact of infectious diseases on isolated populations, specifically South American forest tribes. He frequented South America, traveling to every country but primarily Brazil, over a period of 30 years, obtaining a wealth of data, which led to new insights regarding the origins of forest tribes and their genetic interrelationship, discovering that a human retrovirus is endemic among some of these Amazonian Amerindian populations. He interacted with over 24 Amazon Indian tribes. The first tribe, the Tirio, had been cannibals. He recalled, “One day I was awaked from sleep in my hammock to find an Indian wearing feathers on his shoulders, standing over me with what looked like a set of spears. This turned out not to be an attack, but a desire to trade and it began a museum’s worth of Amazonian artifacts.” Professor Black’s collection is to be donated to the Yale Peabody Museum.

Dr. Black was an avid gardener, devoting much of his time to his remarkable displays of shrubs, flowers, plants, rocks, ponds, and streams at his home in Branford. With extreme industry and patience, crow bars, and car jacks, he moved boulders, up to six tons, hundreds of feet to build spectacular rock gardens. He had a passion for nature and regularly canoed the streams and rivers of Connecticut.

Dr. Black is survived by his wife Joyce, daughter Meta Matthews, sons Douglas Black of New Haven and Peter Black, Esq.’81 of Branford, several grandchildren, his sister Meta Beduz, and brothers Frederick Black, Douglas Black, M.D., and the Reverend Harold Black. Funeral arrangements are pending.