Glaze, pioneering environmentalist and former ESE professor and chair, dies at 80

December 20, 2014

Dr. Bill Glaze

William Howard Glaze, PhD, former professor and chair of environmental sciences and engineering (ESE) at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, died Dec. 17 at the age of 80. Dr. Glaze was founding director of the Carolina Environmental Program, which later became UNC’s Institute for the Environment (IE).

“Bill’s expansive vision of environmental science and its connection to human health and well-being had a significant influence on campus and well beyond,” wrote Michael Aitken, PhD, current ESE chair, and Larry Band, PhD, Voit Gilmore Distinguished Professor of geography and IE director, in a letter to constituents of their respective units.

Dr. Glaze was founding chair of the Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board’s Drinking Water Committee (1989-1991), chair of EPA’s full Science Advisory Board (2001-2004) and editor from 1988 to 2002 of the top journal in the field, Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T).

In 2008, he was designated a “Legend in Environmental Chemistry” at an American Chemical Society symposium. Another ACS symposium was held in his honor in 2009, and a special issue of ES&T was dedicated to him in 2010.

After receiving a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and holding a postdoctoral position at Rice University, Dr. Glaze joined the faculty of what is now the University of North Texas, where he remained until 1980. He served on the faculty of the University of Texas at Dallas, where he directed the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies from 1980 to 1984, and as director of the Environmental Science and Engineering Program at the University of California at Los Angeles from 1984 to 1989.

He was selected as chair of the UNC School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering in 1989 and left to direct the Carolina Environmental Program in 1997. In 2003, he established an interdisciplinary program at Oregon Health Science University, aimed at integrating human and environmental health. He returned to Texas, his native state, in 2005.

He is survived by his wife Erma Glaze, two children and three grandchildren.

Aitken, Band and Russ Christman, PhD, ESE professor and chair emeritus, co-authored an obituary that will appear in ES&T.

In that article, they write:

Glaze will be remembered as one of the most influential figures in environmental science as the 20th century closed and the 21st began. He was a first-rate scholar, administrator and public servant who believed passionately that human health is inseparable from the health of the environment… Just as important as his research contributions, Bill understood very early the serious implications of climate change and the need to alter the paradigm for industrial and hazardous waste management; he was an early advocate of “green chemistry” and pollution prevention. He was truly a visionary who fervently believed that addressing the complex environmental challenges of his, and still our, time required the synergistic application of the physical sciences, health sciences, social sciences, law, policy and engineering.