Newell E. Good, ESA Fellow (1943)

Dr. Newell Emanuel Good (deceased 14 June 1993), a public health entomologist, was elected as ESA Fellow in 1943. His scientific research was focused on the taxonomy, distribution, and ecology of ectoparasitic arthropods (primarily ticks and fleas) and mosquitoes and their relationships with pathogens.

Dr. Good was born in Bellevue, OH, on 31 December 1905. He obtained a B.A. from Heidelberg College in Tiffin, OH, in 1927. After graduating college, he served as an entomologist for the USDA in the Bureau of Animal Industry and the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, respectively, where his research focused on pests of stored grain. Good attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and was awarded an M.S. in 1929, and Ph.D. in 1935. His dissertation was entitled The Flour Beetles of the Genus Tribolium, which was ultimately published as a USDA technical bulletin in 1936. In it, Good details why the single flour beetle species originally described by Fabricius should be split into two species. After Good’s analysis, one species remained as Tenebrio ferrugineus while the second, the red flour beetle, was named Tribolium castaneum.

Concurrent with obtaining his Ph.D., Dr. Good became an entomologist/sanitarian for the U.S. Public Health Service (which later became the CDC) in 1931, serving in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Atlanta, respectively, until 1953. During these years, Dr. Good’s research focused on mosquito surveys and the role of fleas in murine typhus infection. For a 13-month period in 1946–1947, Dr. Good served with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Fuzhou, China, working on bubonic plague.

Following his post at the U.S. Public Health Service, Dr. Good became medical entomologist for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health from 1953–1968. From 1968–1972, he served as entomologist for the southeastern region of the New York State Department of Health. During these years, Dr. Good’s research concentrated on tick distribution on and around Long Island, NY. It is believed that during his tick collections around New York, Dr. Good contracted one of the first cases of Lyme disease. Dr. Good formally retired to Atlanta in March 1972 with his wife, Virginia.

Dr. Good’s lifetime achievements included the publication of approximately 30 technical papers on ticks, fleas and mosquitoes, which have greatly contributed to the field of arthropod ectoparasitology. In 1941, a new species of flea, Micropsylla goodi Hubbard, was named in his honor. Dr. Good was an active member in the American Society of Tropical Medicine as well as the ESA.

(updated September, 2011)