Charles W. Bishop

Published January 23, 2014 This content is archived.

Charles W. Bishop, professor emeritus of medicine, died Jan. 11 in his Amherst home after living with prostate cancer for more than a decade. He was 93.

A native of Elmira, Bishop earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Syracuse University and a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Rochester, where he was a research associate on the Manhattan Project during World War II.

He joined the faculty at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical in 1947 as an instructor in biochemistry and medicine.

Bishop received a National Institutes of Health fellowship to study at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, in 1955. On his return, he expanded his earlier research into the cause of gout to the metabolism of red blood cells and blood preservation. He also headed the Clinical Chemistry Laboratory at Buffalo General Medical Center.

Founder of the Blood Information Service, he published more than 65 research papers and co-edited a book, “The Red Blood Cell.”

Bishop was interested early on in medical informatics and computer use in diagnosis, and created the system “Framemed, a Framework for Medical Knowledge.” He recently was promoting the use of electronic personal health records that people could carry with them at all times.

He was a member of the American Chemical Society, American Physiological Society, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Syracuse University presented him with the Dean of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2004 and the SU Club of WNY named him a Distinguished Alumni in 2006.

Bishop’s wife of 64 years, UB faculty member and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Beverly Bishop, died in 2008.