Professor Chin-Thack Soh (1921–2016)

Professor Chin-Thack Soh (M.D., D.M.Sc.) passed away on 31 October 2016. He was born on 30 January in 1921 in Iksan, Jeollabuk-do (Province), Korea and grew up there. He graduated from Severance Union Medical College (former Yonsei University College of Medicine) in 1941. He studied at Tokyo Imperial University in Japan on infectious diseases, including tuberculosis and typhoid fever until 1944. After returning from Japan, he served as the director of Suwon Tuberculosis Sanatorium. Thereafter, he became a researcher at the Institute of Rural Health, Gunsan and a chief physician at Palbong Clinic, Jeol labuk-do, and he dedicated himself to the parasite control and public health improvement in Korea (1947–1956).

After then, he studied on parasitology and tropical medicine at Tulane University, USA in 1956. Returning to Korea, he established the Department of Parasitology at Yonsei University College of Medicine in 1957, and began to work as a professor until his retirement in 1986. He initiated the Korean Sanitary Zoological Association in 1958. He was a charter member of the Korean Society for Parasitology which was established in 1959 (currently The Korean Society for Parasitology and Tropical Medicine), and contributed to the development of the Society serving as the President of the Society for 2 years from 1965.

He established the Institute of Tropical Medicine at Yonsei University in 1968. The Institute held an international tropical medicine seminar annually, which played an essential role in tropical medicine researches in Korea. He served as the Dean at Yonsei University College of Medicine for 2 years from 1981. He was nominated as an expert on parasitology at the WHO (1984–1991). He initiated the Malacological Society of Korea in 1984, and served as the President of the International Society for Medical and Applied Malacology in 1991 to develop researches on mollusks and snail-mediated parasitic infections. After retirement from Yonsei University, he established the Department of Parasitology, Wonkwang University College of Medicine in Iksan, Jeollabuk-do, and served as a Professor for 10 years.

He did many pioneering researches covering a wide variety of parasitic infections, including soil-transmitted helminthiases, fish-borne parasitic infections, and intestinal protozoan infections which were highly prevalent in Korea during his time. His research on amoebiasis in Korea was published as a monograph in Korean Journal of Parasitology in 1981. Senior parasitologists and his disciples in parasitology remember him as a highly humane character with a Christian spirit, and also an enthusiastic scholar and a teacher.