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. William "Jack" Schull in archive of the McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library.](https://library.tmc.edu/mcgovern/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/06/schull-in-archives-by-plm-72.jpg)
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.
![Left to right, William J. Schull, Ph.D., professor emeritus of genetics and epidemiology at the School of Public Health at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; Masahito Ando, Ph.D., a professor of archival science at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, Japan; Philip Montgomery, MLIS, CA, head of the TMC Library's McGovern Historical Center; and archivist and historian Kaori Maekawa. (Credit: Maggie Galehouse, TMC News)](https://library.tmc.edu/mcgovern/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/06/img_0910-e1488768196837.jpg?w=605)
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.
![Screenshot of Dr. Schull's Photoshop Elements catalog where he tagged as many people as he could remember. Dr. Schull appears in the center of the screen. He identified 140 people in 5400 images.](https://library.tmc.edu/mcgovern/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/06/screen-shot-2017-06-22-at-1-59-40-pm.png?w=605)
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.