Charles Hercus

Sir Charles Ernest Hercus (13 June 1888 – 26 March 1971) was a New Zealand doctor and professor of public health. He served as dean of the University of Otago Dunedin School of Medicine from 1937 to 1958.

Biography Hercus was born in Dunedin on 13 June 1888. He was in the first class at the Otago Dental School and completed his BDS in 1911, before also completing MB ChB degrees in 1914, MD in 1921, and DPH in 1922. He served in World War I at Gallipoli and the Middle East, rising to rank of major in the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Field Ambulance from January 1917.

Hercus married Isabella Rea Jones at Johnsonville on 6 February 1923, and the couple went on to have four children. and an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1919 King's Birthday Honours. Hercus was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 1947 New Year Honours, and in 1953 he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal. In 1962, he was conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Otago.

Honorific eponym

The Hercus Building, part of the University of Otago Dunedin School of Medicine, on the corner of Great King and Hanover Streets, is named for Hercus.

The Health Research Council of New Zealand offers an annual Sir Charles Hercus Health Research Fellowship, worth up to NZ$600,000 "for emerging scientists who have demonstrated outstanding potential to develop into highly skilled researchers able to initiate new avenues of investigation", in his honour. The Royal Society Te Apārangi awards the Hercus Medal for excellence in molecular and cellular sciences, biomedical science or clinical science and public health every two years.