Charles Donald O'Malley

Charles Donald O'Malley (April 1, 1907 – April 6, 1970) was an American Latinist and professor of medical history, recognized as a leading expert on the medicine of the Renaissance and, especially, the work of Vesalius. O'Malley was the president of the History of Science Society for a two-year term from 1967 to 1968)

Biography

Charles Donald O'Malley, a third-generation Californian, was born in Alameda County, California. 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 and continued advanced studies in his spare time. In 1939 he married Dr. Frances M. Keddie, a dermatologist and dermatological researcher. In 1943 he returned to Stanford University as a doctoral student and graduated with a Ph.D. in 1945 with an outstanding, comprehensive dissertation on the life, thought, and influence of Jacopo Aconcio. Upon completing his Ph.D., Charles D. O'Malley joined in 1945 Stanford University's history department as the department's general expert on Renaissance history. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1952–1953. He and John Bertrand deCusance Morant Saunders (1903–1991) published extensively on Vesalius, Leonardo da Vinci, Gabriele Fallopio, and other famous, Renaissance anatomists. 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. During his career, O'Malley also did noteworthy research on the Spanish physicians Andrés Laguna, Pedro Jimeno, and Bernardino Montaña de Monserrate. For the academic year 1959–1960 O'Malley was a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1960 he became a tenured, full professor in UCLA's division of medical history in the department of anatomy at UCLA. He was eventually promoted to be the head of UCLA's newly created department of medical history, a position which he retained until his sudden death in 1970 in Los Angeles at the age of 63. He lectured at many American universities and also in Britain, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Canada. During the 1950s and 1960s he corresponded extensively with important, medical historians such as John F. Fulton, F. N. L. Poynter, and Charles Singer.

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. During the 1960s Murphy and O'Malley worked together productively. Murphy with O'Malley's help persuaded the directors of the Wellcome Trust to donate 30,000 objects from the Wellcome Ethnological Collection in London to assist the founding in 1963 of a new UCLA campus museum. The new museum was originally named the "Laboratory of Ethnic Arts and Technology."

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 in 1970.

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 Prix Eugène Baie II 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

• O'Malley, C. Donald (1954). "Andreas Vesalius' Pilgrimage". Isis. 45 (2): 138–144. doi:10.1086/348311.
• O'Malley, C. Donald (1967). "The Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana". JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. 200 (1): 35–38. doi:10.1001/jama.1967.03120140093014. PMID 5342401. (See Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana.)
• O'Malley, C. D. (1968). "Tudor Medicine and Biology". Huntington Library Quarterly. 32 (1): 1–27. doi:10.2307/3816834. JSTOR 3816834. PMID 19928329.
• O'Malley, C. D. (1971). "Desiderius Erasmus". JAMA. 216: 66. doi:10.1001/jama.1971.03180270032004. (See Erasmus.)

Books and monographs

• O'Malley, Charles Donald (1945). Jacopo Acontio: His Life, Thought and Influence. Stanford University; 738 pages, Ph.D. thesis{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Saunders, John B. deC. M.; O'Malley, Charles Donald, eds. (22 October 2013). Andreas Vesalius Bruxellensis: The Bloodletting Letter of 1539: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Evolution of Vesalius's Scientific Development. Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 978-1-4831-9456-1; 94 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link); 1947 1st edition. New York: Henry Schuman.
• Vesalius, Andreas; O'Malley, Charles Donald (January 1973). The Illustrations from the Works of Andreas Vesalius of Brussels: With Annotations and Translations, a Discussion of the Plates and Their Background, Authorship and Influence, and a Biographical Sketch of Vesalius. Courier Corporation. ISBN 978-0-486-20968-5; illustrated; 248 pages; translated and annotated by John B. deC. M. Saunders and Charles D. O'Malley{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link); 1950 1st edition. Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Company.
• Leonardo Da Vinci on the Human Body: The Anatomical, Physiological, and Embryological Drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci: with Translations, Emendations and a Biographical Introduction. Henry Schuman. 1952. LCCN 52004858; illustrated; 506 pages; translated and edited by Charles Donald O'Malley and John B. deC. M. Saunders{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link); 1983 Dover reprint. Courier Corporation. January 1983. ISBN 978-0-486-24483-9.
• The Controversy on the Comets of 1618: Galileo Galilei, Horatio Grassi, Mario Guiducci, Johann Kepler. University of Pennsylvania Press. 11 November 2016. ISBN 978-1-5128-0145-3; 408 pages; translated by Stillman Drake and C. D. O'Malley{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link); 1960 1st edition. LCCN 59010458; illustrated; xxv+380 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Lectures on the whole of anatomy. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 1961. LCCN 61016879; an annotated translation of William Harvey's Prelectiones anatomiae universalis; illustrated; 239 pages; translated and annotated by C.D. O'Malley, F.N.L. Poynter, and K.F. Russell{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Introduction to anatomy, 1532, a facsimile reproduction. Stanford University Press. 1961. LCCN 61065870; English and Latin text of In anatomicen introductio luculenta et brevis by David Edguard; 64 pages; English translation and an introductory essay on anatomical studies in Tudor England by Charles Donald O'Malley and Kenneth Fitzpatrick Russell{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• On the burning of his library, and On medical travel by Bartholin Thomas. University of Kansas, Publications, Library series, no. 9. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Libraries. 1961. LCCN 60063354; viii+101 pages; translated by Charles D. O'Malley{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• O'Malley, Charles Donald (1962). Early Concepts of the Anthropomorpha; 64 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• O'Malley, Charles Donald (1964). Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564. Berkeley California: University of California Press; 480 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Clarke, Edwin; O'Malley, Charles Donald (1996). The Human Brain and Spinal Cord: A Historical Study Illustrated by Writings from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (2nd, revised ed.). Norman. ISBN 978-0-930405-25-0; 951 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link); 1st edition. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 1968. LCCN 68011275; illustrated; xiii+926 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• O'Malley, C. D., ed. (1969). Leonardo's Legacy: An International Symposium. UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Publication no. 2. University of California Press. LCCN 68014976; illustrated; viii+245 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• O'Malley, C. D., ed. (28 April 2023). The History of Medical Education: An International Symposium Held February 5–9, 1968. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-31344-6. 1st edition 1970. LCCN 72085449; xii+548 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)

External links

• "[Charles D. O'Malley] - Digital Collections - National Library of Medicine". 1969. (photo print)