Charles D. Phelps - Biography

Biography

Born in San Antonio, Texas, and raised in Waterloo, Iowa, Phelps was the eldest of four sons, all of whom became medical doctors or scientists, born to Gardner Dexter Phelps, M.D., a private-practice ophthalmologist, and Virginia Kuning Phelps.

Phelps earned his undergraduate (B.A., 1959; Phi Beta Kappa) and medical (M.D., 1963; Alpha Omega Alpha) degrees at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. He completed an internship at Boston City Hospital between 1963 and 1964, and a residency there in internal medicine in the following year. From 1965 to 1967, he served in the United States Air Force as a doctor at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C.

In 1967, Phelps returned to Iowa City to work for a year as an NIH postdoctoral fellow under Mansour F. Armaly in the University of Iowa's glaucoma research laboratory, an experience that persuaded him to become a glaucoma specialist. He continued at the university as a resident in ophthalmology from 1968 to 1971. For the following year, he was an NIH special fellow under Bernard Becker in the department of ophthalmology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Returning to the University of Iowa College of Medicine in 1972 to join its faculty, Phelps succeeded his mentor Armaly as director of the department of ophthalmology's glaucoma service. He attended to hundreds of patients, educated scores of medical students, and wrote dozens of articles for medical journals reporting on the findings of the medical studies he oversaw.

In 1984, after rising to the rank of full professor, Phelps was appointed chair of the university's ophthalmology department, widely recognized as one of the foremost eye clinics in the country. Soon afterward, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died eighteen months later at the age of 47, survived by his wife Margaret Dorsey Phelps, whom he married in 1964, his four children, his parents, and his brothers. His son Christopher Phelps is a historian and lecturer at the University of Nottingham.

Phelps was a founding member of the American Glaucoma Society. At its first meeting, convened in his honor in Iowa City in 1987, a Hawthorn tree was planted, which still stands outside the ophthalmology department, to commemorate his life and contributions. In a keynote address, Armaly described him as "a prolific contributor of new knowledge" who left a "scientific legacy admirable in its size, variety, and quality," concluding, "There is hardly an area in glaucoma that did not interest him and benefit from his research effort."