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Charlotte Mangum Obituary
IN MEMORIAM
Charlotte Preston Mangum
Charlotte Preston Mangum (1938-1998) died February 19, 1998, in Williamsburg, Virginia. She suffered a recurrence of the cancer originally diagnosed in 1994. Charlotte was a distinguished and loved colleague.
Charlotte received an A.B. degree in philosophy and zoology at Vassar College in 1959, an M.S. degree in zoology at Yale University in 1961, and a Ph.D. in biology at Yale University in 1963. She was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow conducting research at Bedford College, University of London, from 1963 to 1964. She then joined the faculty in the Department of Biology at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where she was promoted through the ranks (to associate professor in 1968 and professor in 1974). In 1992, she was awarded the prestigious Chancellor Professorship.
Charlotte held many other professional appointments. She had a longtime association with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where she was a visiting investigator in 1966 and a course instructor during the summers fo 1969 through 1973 and 1984. She was also a lecturer in zoophysiology in the Department of Zoophysiology at the University of Aarhus in Denmark in 1974. Most recently, she was a distinguished research fellow at the Bodega Marine Laboratory (1992) and a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (1992).
Charlotte was very active in scientific societies. She was a member of the American Physiological Society; the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in which she served as chair of the Biological Sciences Section from 1982 to 1985; the American Institute of Biological Sciences, in which she served on the Governing Board from 1977 to 1980; the Corporation of Marine Biological Laboratory; Sigma Xi; the Crustacean Society; the Marine Biological Association (United Kingdom); and the Society for Experimental Biology (United Kingdom).
She was very active in the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology (formerly the American Society of Zoologists). She served as secretary of the Division of Comparative Physiology and Biochemistry (1973–1974) and later as chair of that division (1978–1979). She was a member of the Executive Committee from 1974 to 1976 and most recently served as the society’s president (1995).
Charlotte was also active in supporting journals. She served on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including the American Zoologist (1971–1975), Physiological Zoology (1975–1986), Marine Biology Letters (1979–1984), Biological Bulletin (1983–1986), Journal of Experimental Biology (1986–1998), Advances in Environmental and Comparative Physiology (1986-1998), American Journal of Physiology (Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 1988–1994), and Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology (1989–1994). She served as an associate editor for the Journal of Experimental Zoology (1971–1976 and 1978), the Journal of Crustacean Biology (1985–1989), and Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology (1994–1997). Finally, she was appointed editor-in-chief of Physiological Zoology in 1995 and served the journal in that capacity until just before her death.
Charlotte also served as the secretary for the U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Physiological Sciences (1979–1984). She was one of the organizers and the first chair (1979–1984) of the Section of Comparative Animal Physiology and Biochemistry of the International Union of Biological Sciences. Charlotte served as a panel member on a number of occasions for the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and in 1993 as an ad hoc member of the Comparative Medicine Review Committee for the National Institutes of Health.
Charlotte’s research has been supported nearly continuously since 1963 by the NSF. She has authored more than 135 publications on various aspects of animal physiology. She was honored recently by the Crustacean Society, receiving the Research Excellence Award of the Crustacean Society. Her department at the College of William and Mary has established the Charlotte Preston Mangum Prize, to be awarded each year to the outstanding undergraduate research student in the department.
Charlotte was a prolific scientist and keen researcher; her name is found throughout the literature of comparative zoology, though her primary field of research was respiratory physiology of oxygen-carrying molecules. More than 70 undergraduate and graduate students came out of Charlotte’s lab with a clearer understanding of the practice of science and much more. Her students’, friends’, and colleagues’ lives were enriched by her gifts of caring, help, and friendship. Many of us will consider Charlotte’s greatest contribution to be her devotion to student learning, education, and training in comparative zoology. She will be greatly missed, and her influence on comparative zoology and the biological sciences will be felt for many years to come.
Lou Burnett
Grice Marine Laboratory, College of Charleston
Peter deFur
Virginia Commonwealth University