IN MEMORIAM

Clarence J. Weinmann

Professor of Parasitology, Emeritus

UC Berkeley

1925-2013

Clarence (“Clare”) J. Weinmann, Emeritus Professor of Parasitology, University of California, Berkeley (UCB), passed away on June 26, 2013. Professor Weinmann was born in Oakland, California on May 27, 1925, and grew up in San Francisco where he graduated from Lowell High School in 1943. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army from September 1943 to March 1947; his duties included serving as a language translator/interpreter. Professor Weinmann received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1950 and 1958, both from UCB. He then spent two years as a faculty instructor at the University of Florida and two years at Rice University as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow He joined the Department of Entomology and Parasitology in the College of Agriculture at UCB as an Assistant Professor of Parasitology in 1962 and was promoted to Professor of Parasitology and Helminthology in 1975. In 1974 the former agricultural and forestry schools were combined to form the College of Natural Resources. He retired in 1989 following which the majors in both parasitology and entomology were eliminated at UCB though the Essig Museum of Entomology remains a campus jewel.

 

Professor Weinmann taught numerous lecture and laboratory classes in Medical and Veterinary Helminthology and seminars in Parasitology on a regular basis. Additionally, he occasionally taught courses in Introductory Pathobiology, Microbiology related to Health and Disease, Immunology seminars and Field Courses in Parasitology and Medical Entomology. Professor Weinmann was an enthusiastic and patient teacher who was especially encouraging and helpful to his graduate students. Through his personal collecting efforts and exchanges of specimens with colleagues at other institutions, he amassed an impressive collection of specimens used in his meticulously prepared Helminthology laboratory classes. Student evaluations consistently rated his teaching as being very good to excellent.

 

During his career Professor Weinmann supervised the research of a number of graduate students, and he served on the thesis advisory committee for many other graduate students in Parasitology and Medical Entomology. Furthermore, he served as the Graduate Advisor in Parasitology and as an advisor for undergraduate pre-medical and pre-veterinary students. He also was a frequent member of departmental examination and Ph.D candidate qualifying examination committees. Professor Weinmann’s other teaching contributions involved service on course panels in charge of the curricula in Animal Resource Science, Entomology, and Bioresource Science.

 

Professor Weinmann was well known for his important basic research on helminth (worm) parasites of deer and other wildlife. His elucidation of previously unknown features of the life cycles, modes of transmission and pathologies contributed important knowledge about a little known group of wildlife parasites. His research made important contributions to the identification of the insect carriers of several different filarial-worm parasites. One unique discovery was that, with certain deer parasites, the juvenile microfilarial stage infective to parasitic fly-carriers dispersed from anatomical areas where the adult worms were located and aggregated in facial and ear tissues, the only places where the blood-sucking carrier flies feed on deer.

 

Besides his teaching and research activities, Professor Weinmann made many valuable contributions to general university affairs. He served two terms in the Representative Assembly and on the Educational Policy Committee, and on the Council for Special Curricula. For many years, he served on the Berkeley Campus Animal Welfare Committee (including a stint as its Chair), and made financial contributions to support the Animal Welfare facilities. During the remodeling of Wellman Hall, he was the principal advisor for the new animal holding facilities. In the College of Natural Resources, he served as the Representative to the School of Public Health and on many committees, including the Graduate Affairs Committee, the Committee on Courses, and the Advisory Subcommittee on Resource Science. Outside of his university-related responsibilities, Professor Weinmann served as a voluntary consultant for the California State Department of Public Health, the California Fish and Game Department, the San Francisco Zoo and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

 

Professor Weinmann’s students and colleagues remember Clare as a kind, generous, readily accessible and extremely friendly person. He was a self-trained naturalist with a huge personal library and a broad “Old School” knowledge of Natural History. During his retirement years, he volunteered for many years as a docent in the Gallery of Natural Sciences at the Oakland Museum of California where he delighted in sharing his extensive knowledge of natural history with the public.

 

Professor Weinmann’s wife Carol predeceased him in 2011. He is survived by two sons, Barry and Jeffery and three grandchildren, who reside in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

 

John R. Anderson                                                                                                        2013

Robert S. Lane