Malcolm Potts, a trailblazer in international family planning and women’s reproductive health, died in Berkeley, CA, on April 25, 2025. He was 90. He had been a member of the IUSSP since 1969.
A University of Cambridge–trained obstetrician and reproductive scientist, Malcolm Potts emerged in the 1960s as a leader in what was then a revolutionary movement for access to reliable contraception and safe abortion. In 1968, he became the first medical director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Malcolm Potts moved to the United States in 1978, where he served as president and chief executive of Family Health International (FHI) from 1978 to 1990. During this period, FHI became the largest global AIDS prevention programme outside of the World Health Organization. There, he led pioneering maternal mortality studies which helped start the worldwide Safe Mother Initiative. He also built the largest AIDS prevention program outside of the World Health Organization and initiated the first HIV prevention programs in Africa, with sex workers. Family Health International became the first American institution to receive large scale federal support for the control of AIDS.
He joined the faculty of UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 1992 as the inaugural Fred H. Bixby Endowed Chair in Population and Family Planning and quickly became a popular professor. In 2009, Potts established UC Berkeley Public Health’s Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability, an enduring institution that embodies his passion for research and for training the next generation of scholars.
Michael Potts published ten books and over 350 scientific papers and articles. His books include Abortion (co-written with Peter Diggory and John Peel, 1977), Textbook of Contraceptive Practice (1st edition co-written with John Peel, 1969; 2nd edition co-written with Peter Diggory, 1983; long the key textbook in the field), Queen Victoria's Gene (written with his brother Prof. William Potts), Ever since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality (written with Dr Roger Short, 1999) and Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World (co-written with Thomas Hayden, 2008). He worked as a consultant to the World Bank and the British, American, Canadian and Egyptian governments.
Read the UC Berkeley Public Health obituary: https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/articles/news/in-memoriam/dr-malcolm-potts-dies-at-90