Harvey Shoals was born 27 January 1922 on a small farm south of Burlington, Vermont. After WWII, while attending college on the GI Bill, he majored in biology and then continued for a doctorate in ecology and epidemiology. During the 1950s, while still in his thirties, he put his ideals and skills to work finding ways to prevent the spread of a deadly, parasitic, tropical disease in Africa, and on the islands of Puerto Rico and Tavira in the Caribbean.