Stiles, Charles W(ardell) (1867–1941)

US medical zoologist and public health reformer. He investigated diseases in animals in slaughterhouses, pork trichinosis, and parasitic worms in livestock. His major contribution was his discovery of a variety of hookworm and confirming it as endemic in the southern USA in 1902, leading a campaign to eradicate hookworm disease in the USA.

He was born in Spring Valley, New York. He did his graduate studies at several major European universities before going to Washington, DC, as a zoologist with the Department of Agriculture's bureau of animal industry 1891–1902. In 1895 he was one of five elected to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, serving as its secretary from 1898–1936. Transferring to the Hygienic Laboratory of the US Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, he served as chief of its zoology division 1902–31; he also taught medical zoology at Georgetown 1892–1906, and at Johns Hopkins 1897–1937. He investigated the health problems in various work sites and performed experiments on soil pollution caused by pathogens in groundwater. Another of his major contributions – which occupied him from the 1890s to the mid-1930s – was coauthoring the Index-Catalog of Medical and Veterinary Zoology (1902–20).