Juan Chackiel, a distinguished Uruguayan demographer, died on July 4th in Santiago de Chile. He studied demography at CELADE (the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre), where he then worked for the rest of his career. His research focused mainly on population growth and structure and its components, issues on which he published extensively. From 1987 to 2002 he was head of the Demography Area at CELADE, in charge of coordinating and supervising research and technical assistance in demographic analysis and data production. He also had editorial responsibilities in CELADE’s publications, the Boletín Demográfico and Notas de Población.
He became a member of the IUSSP in 1972 and was a member of the Committee on Biological and Social Correlates of Mortality (1981-1985) and then of the Panel on Adult Mortality (1989-1993). Together with Ian M. Timaeus and Lado Ruzicka, Juan edited the book Adult Mortality in Latin America published in 1996 by Oxford University Press and based on a Seminar organized by the IUSSP Committee on Adult Mortality.
Juan Chackiel will be gratefully remembered by several generations of Latin American demographers for his teaching. Not only was he technically proficient; it was easy to see that he loved to teach.
Juan, together with other advanced students, greeted us newcomers to CELADE’s courses back in 1970. Since then, he was my friend, a friendship which with time came to include his family and mine. He was generous and warm, dispensing affectionate smiles, ironical humor, and a place to stay if needed. All of us who knew him will miss Juan greatly.
Edith Alejandra Pantelides
Read also:
- A detailed review of Juan Chackiel’s career has just been published in the last issue of the Latin American Population Review (in Spanish) (http://revistarelap.org/ojs/index.php/relap/article/view/171)
- Juan Chackiel‘s obituary (in Spanish) on the ALAP website: http://www.alapop.org/alap/