IN MEMORIAM

IN MEMORIAM

Carl E. Hopkins

Professor of Public Health–Health Services, Emeritus

Los Angeles

1912–2002

Carl E. Hopkins, Ph.D. was associated with the UCLA School of Public Health from its earliest days in 1961 until his retirement in 1980. He received an A.B. summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1938, an A.M. from Harvard University in 1935, a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1948, and an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University in 1957.

 

Dr. Hopkins began his career as chief statistician for the Kaiser Corporation in Portland, Oregon (1941-46), where he compiled data for more efficient construction of Liberty Ships during World War II and then moved on to study patterns of illness and absenteeism of the Kaiser workforce.

 

From 1946 to 1949 Dr. Hopkins worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitative Administration as an economic analyst and adviser in Shanghai. There he learned to speak Chinese and acquired both knowledge and appreciation of Chinese art and culture.

 

From 1946 to 1960, Dr. Hopkins was associate professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at the University of Oregon Medical School and later became adjunct associate professor of Public Health at the University of Southern California School of Medicine.

 

In 1964 he joined the faculty of the young UCLA School of Public Health, having served as a research statistician at the School during 1961-62. As a faculty member, he became deputy director of the California Center for Health Services Research as well as chairman and associate dean of the School, and later chairman of the school’s faculty executive committee.

 

Dr. Hopkins was the author or co-author of more than 80 articles on a wide variety of statistical, clinical, epidemiological, and public health matters. He also served as statistical consultant to numerous organizations. In 1970, he co-authored three chapters in a monograph, Health Insurance Plans - Studies in Organizational Diversity, edited by M.I. Roemer, D. Dubois, and S. Rich. Later he co-authored with R.W. Hetherington and M.I. Roemer a book, Health Insurance Plans: Promise and Performance, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1975.

 

During the two decades before his death, Carl continued to promote public health research and the professional development of students through his work as President of the Board of Directors of the Maxicare Research and Educational Foundation. Under his leadership the Foundation supported student internships and doctoral-level studies in nonprofit and governmental health care settings in Southern California.

 

In addition to his extensive scholarly research and writings, Carl Hopkins wrote literary pieces. They are collected under the title Sketches from Memory and constitute charming vignettes of his life and, travels and the characters whom he knew. Carl was also a musician - an organist in churches in his youth and a pianist until the crippling of his fingers from Duprey’s contractions ended his playing. As an art connoisseur, Carl Hopkins encouraged the painting career of his talented and devoted wife of 50 years, Flo Hopkins.

 

Carl Hopkins brought to the UCLA School of Public Health his wealth of knowledge experience, and skills as an able teacher, a beloved mentor of students, and an effective administrator. A colleague of Carl Hopkins has said, “Carl brought a measure of calmness to the school in those turbulent, hectic days of the 1960s and 1970s.”

 

Lester Breslow

Daniel Ershoff

Ruth Roemer