British Medical Journal obituaryAbstract:
William (“Bill”) Carter Jenkins was born in Mt Pleasant, South Carolina, in the US, in 1945, the son of Albert Jenkins, an undertaker and restaurant owner, and his wife, Martha, a schoolteacher. He excelled at high school, where he read assiduously and developed an interest in science and political activism. He graduated from the historically black Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Georgia, with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, and, in the 1960s, was one of the first African-Americans recruited to the National Center for Health Statistics, a branch of the public health service. He received a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina in 1983 and did postdoctoral work in biostatistics at Harvard University School of Public Health. Also in 1983 he married fellow epidemiologist Diane Rowley, and they enjoyed a happy marriage.