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Black -- Craig Call Black, Ph.D., a noted paleontologist, and museum director, died on December 5, 1998, in Albuquerque, NM of complications following chemotherapy for lymphoma. He was the son of the late El Paso pediatrician, Arthur P. Black and Mary Nichols Black. His maternal grandfather was the well-known El Paso attorney, Robert L. Nichols. He was born in Peking, China in 1932 where his father taught pediatrics and he lived there until 1936. Dr. Black briefly attended Austin High School in El Paso, but entered Kent School in Kent, CT in 1945 and graduated cum laude in 1950. He received hi Bachelor's degree from Amherst in 1954 and was appointed a Simpson Fellow at John Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore. The following year he returned to Amherst where he earned a Master's degree in Biology in 1957. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University in 1962. He began his museum career in 1960 as an Associate Curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and was appointed Curator of Vertebrate Fossils two years later. In 1970 he became an Associate Professor of Systematics and Ecology at the University of Kansas. In 1972 he was appointed Director of the Museum and Professor of Geosciences at Texas Tech University. In 1975 he returned to Pittsburgh as the Director of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Dr. Black was appointed Direct of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County on September 1, 1982 and remained there until his retirement in July 1994. Dr. Black was a member of numerous professional associations and was President of the Association of Science Museum Directors, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the American Museum Association, and the Paleontological Society of America. In 1982, President Reagan appointed Dr. Black to serve on the National Museum Services Board and in 1985 Reagan nominated him to serve on the National Science Board for a term that ended in May 1990. While on the National Science Board, he chaired the Committees on International Science Programs, Global Environment and Change, and Biodiversity. In 1991 he was appointed by President George Bush to serve on the Environment for the Americas Board. He also served on the boards of the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property, The African Wildlife Foundation, the Explorer's Club and Explora Science Center and Children's Museum of Albuquerque, NM. In 1994 he was elected to the board of the U.S. Mexico Foundation on Science and Technology and at the time of his death was Vice-Chairman of that group. He also belonged to the California Club, the Sunsetters, the Cosmos Club, The Mt. Kenya Safari Club, the Harvard Club, and the Albuquerque Petroleum Club. Dr. Black's fascination and professional involvement with vertebrate paleontology spanned more than four decades and he maintained an active interest in research activities until his death. His work in vertebrate paleontology took him to France, Tunisia, Kenya (where he worked with Richard Leakey), South Africa, Algeria, Greece and throughout the United States and led to the publication of numerous research reports and professional journal articles. At both Kansas and Texas Tech, he trained Ph.D. candidates in the field. His wife, Elizabeth (an anthropologist known professionally as Dr. Mary Elizabeth King); a former wife, Constance Hockenberry Black of Pittsburgh; two children, Lorna Black Walsh of Albuquerque, NM and Christopher Arthur Black of Portland, OR; and two grandchildren, Joseph Gerard Walsh V and Elizabeth Ellen Walsh survive Dr. Black. Memorial Services will be scheduled at a later date at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, NM and at Kent School in May 1999. The family requests that any gifts in his memory be made to the African Wildlife Foundation, 1400 Sixteenth Street NW, Washington, DC 20036 or to Kent School, Kent, CT 06757. French Mortuary, 111 University Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87102.
        Published on: Sun December 13, 1998