Charles Shagass; Biological Psychiatry Pioneer

Charles Shagass, 73, internationally recognized pioneer in studies of biological causes for mental disorders. A psychiatrist and scientist at Temple University Medical Center in Philadelphia, Shagass wrote seven books and more than 250 articles espousing a biological approach to psychiatry, which has recently won wide acceptance. He was president of the national Society of Biological Psychiatry, the American Psychopathological Assn., the National Assn. of State Mental Health Research Institutes and the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry, which he helped to create in 1974. A native of Montreal, he was educated at McGill University there and the University of Rochester in New York. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Shagass conducted research and taught at McGill and the University of Iowa, and founded Temple’s Psychiatric Electrophysiological Laboratory at Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute. On Wednesday in Philadelphia.