Tim Black
British family planning pioneer
Timothy Reuben Ladbroke "Tim" Black CBE (7 January 1937 – 11 December 2014) was a British family planning pioneer. He was a founding director of Population Services International (PSI) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and later the founder of Marie Stopes International (MSI) in London.
Black was Director of PSI's London-based subsidiary Population Services Family Planning Programme Ltd from 1974 until 1991, when the company was subsumed into Marie Stopes International Ltd. He directed PSI's takeover of the bankrupt Marie Stopes Foundation in 1976, then was chief executive of Marie Stopes International from 1976 until 2006, remaining a director of MSI until his death in 2014.
Black was appointed a CBE in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours for "services to Family Planning in Developing Countries."
Early work and education
Tim Black grew up in a village in Sussex, England, where he met his future wife Jean. The pair were married in 1962, after he qualified in medicine, and started their adventures together by travelling to South Africa and then up to Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia (now Harare in Zimbabwe), where Black spent a year as a house doctor. After Black's year in Rhodesia he and Jean took off three months and drove in a DKW jeep up through Africa, across to Tunis, Europe and back home to Sussex.
On his return to England, Black worked as a senior house officer and registrar while studying for membership of the Royal College of Physicians at Croydon General and Harefield Hospitals. Jean, meanwhile, worked as a medical secretary at Queen Mary's Hospital in Carshalton.
In 1966, looking for more excitement, the couple drove to India through Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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