Wilbur Downs

[1] Downs graduated from Cornell Medical College in medicine in 1938 after studying tropical parasitology with Pedro Kouri at the University of Havana, Cuba.

[citation needed] Downs retired from the army as a lieutenant colonel in 1946 and was sent to Mexico by the Rockefeller Foundation to direct a malaria-control program from 1946-1952.

While there, he set up an extensive public health and malaria investigation program, and was one of the first people to question the use of DDT and similar insecticides in the control of the disease.

Downs kept close contact with William Beebe who, at the time, was the director of the New York Zoological Society's Tropical Research Centre at Simla in Trinidad and helped coordinate the activities of both organisations and sharing resources.

[3] He was the author or co-author of over 150 scientific articles and published a landmark reference work with Max Theiler, The Arthropod-Borne Viruses of Vertebrates in 1973.

He was a keen fisherman and expert marksman (once a member of the National Rifle Team of Trinidad & Tobago), an accomplished photographer, stamp collector, guitarist and bookbinder.