Chave, Sidney

A. Diaries and correspondence

B. Lectures

C. Publications

D. Public Health: research and reference files

E. History of Public Health: research and reference files

F. Teaching of Community/Social Medicine

G. Other institutions

Sidney Chave began his career at the LSHTM as a lab boy in the Department of Chemistry as Applied to Hygiene in 1929, the year the School was formally opened. During the Second World War he was seconded to the (Emergency) Public Health Laboratory Service. In 1946 he returned to the School and was promoted to Senior Technician.

During the following years he studied at Birkbeck College for an Honours Degree in Psychology, which was awarded in 1951. The next year Chave was appointed to the academic staff of the School in the Department of Public Health. For his PhD he undertook a study of mental health in Harlow New Town, which was published, (jointly with Lord Taylor), as Mental Health and Environment in 1964.

In 1969 Chave was promoted to Senior Lecturer in the Department of Community Health (as the Department of Public Health had become). He retired from the LSHTM in 1979 with the accolade of Emeritus Senior Lecturer as well as being awarded a special silver medal for his fifty years of service to the School.

In 1977 he received the Queen's Jubilee Medal. Among other distinctions he gave the 1979 Monkton Copeman Lecture of the Society of Apothecaries and the Inaugural Duncan Memorial Lecture at Liverpool in 1983. He was a founder of the Society for the Social History of Medicine (1969) and its President in 1975 as well as holding other offices. These papers reflect his interests in public health and in its history.

The posthumous volume Recalling the Medical Officer of Health: Writings by Sidney Chave edited by M Warren and H Francis, was published in 1987 by the King's Fund Centre. It includes a biographical memoir.