![Jack Schull in the Special Projects Building mid 1960s [MS 170 Schull Photo Collection, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library]](https://library.tmc.edu/mcgovern/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/06/scan0034.jpg)
McGovern Historical Center Staff
The McGovern Historical Center has lost a dear friend and staunchest advocate this week, Dr. William “Jack” Schull. He died Tuesday morning at his home.
Dr. Schull was the guiding force behind our extensive Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) collection. Using the many contacts that he cultivated during his work in Japan for ABCC and in the Texas Medical Center, he was able to preserve the personal papers of many physicians and scientists in the areas of radiation research and genetics. He promoted multicultural projects between archivists in Japan and the United States. (You can read about the ceremony that marked the culmination of a 4-year international project at the TMC News.) Most recently, he strongly endorsed the Radiation Effects & Events Archive Project, which is an expansion of the ABCC project.
In addition to many of his ABCC colleagues, he has two personal collections preserved in the McGovern Historical Center:
We had an ongoing collaborative project with him to utilize facial recognition tools to identify thousands of people in his photograph collection. He was always seeking newer and better tools to collect information. In fact, he provided the archive with a couple of Mac computers to facilitate these projects. If you love pilot project documentation, you’ll find the facial recognition project report by our former Metadata Intern and Project Archivist, Kiersten Bryant, very fascinating! The project speaks volumes about Dr. Schull’s commitment to the archive.
Dr. Schull will be greatly missed at the archive, but his life, legacy, and influence lives on in every collection he helped preserve.
Learn more about Dr. Schull, and we invite you to leave a thought or memory about Dr. Schull in the comments below.