Memorial resolution: Paul F. Basch

Paul Frederick Basch, professor emeritus of Health Research and Policy at the Stanford University School of Medicine, died on June 14, 2001 at age 67 years from complications related to open heart surgery. He is survived by his wife Natalícia, of Stanford; sons Daniel, of Arroyo Grande, California, and Richard, his wife, Susan, and grandchildren, Nicholas and Samantha, of Scottsdale, Arizona; and a brother, Henry D. Bates, of Saint Augustine, Florida.

Paul Basch was a distinguished parasitologist who served on the Stanford faculty from 1970 until his retirement in 1997. His authoritative Textbook of International Health, first published in 1990 and revised in 1999, is considered a landmark in the field. His other books and more than 100 research papers, primarily on parasitology and parasitic diseases, highlight an outstanding career of scholarship, government service and teaching. He was born on November 10, 1933 in the back of the general store operated by his parents in the village of Kirchstetten, Austria. Fearing disaster in early 1939, his parents sent Paul and his brother from Nazi-occupied Austria to England on the "kindertransport" railway. There the boys were sheltered by a childless British couple who had been strangers to them. Although most kindertransport children never saw their parents again, Paul's parents escaped separately from the war zone and the family was reunited in time to take one of the last ship convoys from Liverpool to New York in 1940. Paul attended New York City public schools, the Bronx High School of Science and the City College of New York, graduating in 1954 with a B.S. degree in Biology. He was then awarded a graduate fellowship in Zoology at the University of Michigan and received his Ph.D. in 1958. At Michigan, he began research on the worm parasites causing the widespread tropical disease schistosomiasis that was to become the cornerstone of his research career.

From 1959 to 1962 Basch served as Assistant Professor of Biology at the Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia, Kansas, but found life in central Kansas too confining. Eager to see the world, he accepted an appointment as Assistant Research Biologist with the International Center for Medical Research and Training (ICMRT), based at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco. The ICMRT operated an overseas program at the Institute for Medical Research in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Paul spent three years in Kuala Lumpur, conducting laboratory and field research on trematode parasites and their molluscan intermediate hosts. After returning to San Francisco in 1965, he traveled to Brazil to investigate host-parasite relations between schistosomes and snails at the Instituto Nacional de Endemias Rurais in Belo Horizonte. There he met a young researcher named Maria Natalícia Mourão whom he married in 1966. The couple began married life in San Francisco and worked together in the laboratory while Paul completed a master's degree in Epidemiology at the School of Public Health in the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1969, shortly after their first son Richard was born, the family traveled to Malaysia, living in a village in the highlands while Paul worked in the field and laboratory. In 1970 he accepted a position at the Stanford University School of Medicine for teaching and research in medical parasitology and international health. In 1975, he was named deputy chairman of the U.S. Schistosomiasis Delegation from the National Academy of Sciences to the People's Republic of China, one of the earliest official delegations to China. While visiting the rural parts of the country, Paul experienced a major heart attack, an event he subsequently documented in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Upon his return to Stanford, Paul devised a method for growing schistosomes in artificial cultures to clarify their nutritional and environmental needs, a technique still used throughout the world. He also helped unravel the complex reproductive relations of these parasites that result in the production of eggs, the major cause of pathology in humans. Having spent years in tropical developing countries, Paul had become interested in broader aspects of public health, leading in 1978 to publication of his first book, International Health, and a long-term association with Oxford University Press. His focus gradually shifted from schistosomiasis to health policy issues and from laboratory research to teaching, writing and consulting. During the 1980s and 1990s he served as a consultant for the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Health Organization and other organizations on a variety of health-related projects in many developing countries. After his Textbook of International Health appeared in 1990 he published books on schistosome biology and on vaccines and world health. He also became involved in the Latin American and African Studies committees and various other internationally oriented activities on the Stanford campus. Although he taught classes in medical parasitology and international health for 30 years and became well known in these fields, he had never himself taken any course in either subject. He often joked about practicing parasitology without a license. He was a long-term member of the American Society of Parasitologists, American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and several other professional organizations.

Paul had a passion for parasitology and taught generations of undergraduates and medical students all he could about the subject. He was a gifted expositor who cared about words and who used them well and precisely. He was loved by his students, who sensed his concern for their education and well being. Once, when his International Health class voted to change its meeting time for the convenience of the majority, he met individually with each of the minority so everyone would be able to take the class. For years he served as advisor to first-year medical students, meeting with them weekly during the fall quarter. Those privileged to take Paul's Medical Parasitology class recall how his humor, his originality of expression, and his passion for the field sparked interest in a subject not universally deemed fascinating.

Paul was a warm and caring colleague. His co-workers recall that upon their arrival at Stanford, when they were feeling anxious and missing their old friends, Paul went out of his way to make them feel welcome, taking them on outings to the wine country, inviting them for dinner, and helping them feel accepted by the Stanford community in every way possible. We, his colleagues and friends, consider ourselves fortunate to have known him and to have worked with him. We will miss his wisdom, directness of expression, imagination and organization. But most of all, we loved him for his irrepressible wit and humor. He made us laugh.

Colleagues, students and friends of Paul F. Basch are invited to attend a memorial service in his honor, which will occur at the Stanford Faculty Club at 4:15 p.m. on Friday, October 26.

Committee:

Professor Alice Whittemore, Chair

Professor Mark A. Hlatky

Professor Lorene M. Nelson