Charles Brooke Worth (September 4, 1908 – December 22, 1984) was an American naturalist and

virologist Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, their ...

who worked as a professor at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

, with the US Army during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, and then with the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

during the post-war period working on matters of public health and mosquito-borne diseases. He travelled around the world, including countries in Africa and Asia, and was the author of several books, including ''Manual of Tropical Medicine'', ''A Naturalist in Trinidad'', ''The Nature of Living Things'', and ''Mosquito Safari: A Naturalist In Southern Africa'', ''Of mosquitoes, moths, and mice''. Worth studied at

and then received an MD from the University of Pennsylvania. While at Swarthmore he was an instructor in

zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

. During

WWII World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he was assigned to the

Army Medical School Founded by U.S. Army Brigadier General George Miller Sternberg, MD in 1893, the Army Medical School (AMS) was by some reckonings the world's first school of public health and preventive medicine. (The other institution vying for this distinction ...

and was one of the instructors of the Tropical Medicine Course and co-author of the ''Manual of Tropical Medicine''. He researched malaria, viral diseases, vectors, mammalian and avian reservoirs in several countries and published widely on the subject. Worth examined the idea of transovarial transmission of viruses by mosquitoes. As a Field Staff Member for the

, Dr. C. Brooke Worth went to the South African Institute of Medical Research (SAIMR) in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...

in the 1950s and was able to carry out a remarkable series of field studies in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

and

Mozambique Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...

. In 1960 he was assigned to the

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

lab in

Port of Spain Port of Spain (Spanish: ''Puerto España''), officially the City of Port of Spain (also stylized Port-of-Spain), is the capital of Trinidad and Tobago and the third largest municipality, after Chaguanas and San Fernando. The city has a municip ...

, associated with the

University of the West Indies The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 17 English-speaking countries and territories in th ...

. He was married to Mérida Gray, who ran a bookshop in Swarthmore. After returning to the US, he settled on a 63-acre farm at Eldora, Cape May, where he conducted studies on the insects and birds and published about them in his ''Of Mosquitoes, Moths and Mice'' (1972). The farm was subsequently made a nature reserve.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Worth, C. Brooke 20th-century American educators American naturalists United States Army officers American textbook writers American medical writers American male non-fiction writers American military writers American virologists Swarthmore College faculty 1908 births 1984 deaths 20th-century naturalists 20th-century American male writers

See also

References