C. D. O'Malley

Charles Donald O'Malley (April 1, 1907 – April 6, 1970) was an American historian of medicine and Latinist, recognized as a leading expert on the medicine of the Renaissance and, in particular, the life and work of the Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius. He taught at Stanford University and at the University of California, Los Angeles. O'Malley was the president of the History of Science Society for a two-year term from 1967 to 1968 and of the International Academy of the History of Medicine from 1967 until his death.

Early life and education

Charles Donald O'Malley was born in Alameda, California on April 1, 1907 as a third-generation Californian. In 1924 he matriculated at Stanford University, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1928 and an M.A. in 1929. From 1929 to 1943 he taught history and Latin at South San Francisco High School. He continued advanced studies in his spare time, publishing his first book in 1942, a translation of a work in Italian by jurist, philosopher, and engineer Jacopo Aconcio, with the translated title ''Of the Things That Have to Be Observed and Taken into Account in the Reading of Histories''.

In 1943 he returned to Stanford University as a doctoral student and graduated with a Ph.D. in 1945 with a dissertation on Jacopo Aconcio titled ''Jacopo Acontio: His Life, Thought, and Influence''. His first published article, "Some Material on the Death of Edward Gibbon" (''Bulletin of the History of Medicine'', February 1943), sparked a long-term correspondence with Yale University historian of medicine John F. Fulton. In this time he also co-authored his first article on Renaissance Dutch anatomist Andreas Vesalius, "Vesalius as a clinician" (''Bulletin of the History of Medicine'', December 1943), and thus began a long series of collaborations with University of California, Berkeley professor of anatomy and medical history John Bertrand deCusance Morant Saunders (1903–1991).

In 1939 he married Dr. Frances M. Keddie, a dermatologist and dermatological researcher who had been working with J. B. deC. M. Saunders.

Career

Upon completing his Ph.D., in 1946 O'Malley joined Stanford University's history department as an associate professor and the department's general expert on Renaissance history. He served as director of Stanford's Lane Medical Library's historical collection 1949–1959 and rose to the rank of full professor in 1951. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1952–1953. He and J. B. deC. M. Saunders continued their collaboration to publish extensively on Vesalius, Leonardo da Vinci, Gabriele Falloppio, Michael Servetus, and other Renaissance anatomists. In addition to his work on already-famous figures, O'Malley also published noteworthy research on then-less-celebrated figures such as the Spanish anatomists Andrés Laguna, Pedro Jimeno, and . O'Malley was the author or co-author of papers published in the ''Bulletin of the History of Medicine'', the ''Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences'', ''Medical History'', and several other journals. By 1958 O'Malley had published more than 20 papers directly or indirectly dealing with the life and work of Vesalius.

In the 1950s Franklin David Murphy, as the chancellor of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, unsuccessfully attempted to recruit O'Malley to become a professor at Lawrence. In 1960 Murphy was appointed the chancellor of UCLA, as well as a professor of medical history.

For the academic year 1959–1960 O'Malley was a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and in 1960 he became a tenured, full professor in UCLA's division of medical history in the department of anatomy at UCLA. During the 1960s chancellor Murphy and O'Malley worked together productively. With O'Malley's help, Murphy persuaded the directors of the Wellcome Trust to donate 30,000 objects from the Wellcome Ethnological Collection in London to assist the founding of a new UCLA campus museum in 1963; the new museum was originally named the "Laboratory of Ethnic Arts and Technology" and is now the Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

In 1964, O'Malley completed his biography of Vesalius, ''Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514–1564'', to immediate acclaim, receiving the 1965 Pfizer Award for an outstanding work in the history of science. This long work had involved O'Malley in sustained collaborations with J. B. deC. M. Saunders, John F. Fulton, and British physician and historian of medicine Charles Singer; Fulton and Singer had themselves been interested in Vesalius by Canadian physician and medical history collector William Osler and were enabled by library collection work done by Harvey Cushing at Osler's earlier suggestion. O'Malley had also collected new sources on Vesalius himself, for instance the letters of Venetian ambassador to the Habsburg court Bernardo Navagero, who knew Vesalius and mentioned him often in his letters.

O'Malley was promoted in 1966 to be the head of UCLA's newly created department of medical history, a position which he retained until his sudden death. He lectured at many American universities and also in Britain, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Canada. During the 1950s and 1960s he corresponded extensively with leading medical historians such as John F. Fulton, F. N. L. Poynter, and Charles Singer.

O'Malley was one of the founding members at the first formal meeting in 1964 of the International Academy of the History of Medicine and was the academy's president from 1967 until his death. He was the president of the History of Science Society for a two-year term from 1967 to 1968. He was editor of the journal ''Clio Medica'' at the time of his death.

Awards and honors

In 1956 O'Malley was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was an honorary or corresponding member of the Royal Society of Medicine, the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries (London), and several other prestigious societies concerned with the history of medicine. In 1965 he received the History of Science Society's Pfizer Award and the Commonwealth Club of California's silver medal. In 1969 he received the '''' from the government of Belgium's Antwerp Province. As a posthumous honor, UCLA established the Charles Donald O'Malley Short-Term Research Fellowships.

Selected publications

Articles

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Books and monographs

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References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:O'Malley, Charles Donald
1907 births
1970 deaths
20th-century American biographers
American male biographers
American medical historians
American historians of science
Stanford University alumni
Stanford University faculty
University of California, Los Angeles faculty
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
People from Alameda County, California