Researching Charles Powell

He was born in Port Dover, the son of Colonel Walker Powell, and educated at Galt College and McGill University. He apprenticed as a machinist with the Grand Trunk Railway and became a mechanical engineer. Powell served on the city council for Ottawa. He became a partner in the lumber firm of Pattee and Perley. He married Helen Louise Pattee.

He was also very well known as a philanthropist and set up many fellowships and research grants. Since the opening of the first Powell Laboratory in 1986, the Charles Lee Powell Foundation has donated over $96 million in grant monies, including over three decades of giving to UC San Diego's Jacob School of Engineering. The Foundation's focus is supporting groundbreaking engineering programs at USC, Caltech, Stanford, and UC San Diego. Its grants to USC School of Engineering have included funding the Charles Lee Powell Hall of Information Sciences and Systems Engineering, named Chairs in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering, and the Charles Lee Powell Foundation Photonics Industrial Laboratory.

The University of Southern California has a Charles Lee Powell Hall designed by William Pereira in his honor.

Powell's specimen records (also known as herbarium specimens) and his Panama garden were studied by researchers at the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Berlin Botanical Garden, the Orchid Herbarium of Oakes Ames at Harvard University, the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, and the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG). Dozens of orchid species were named in his honor. In 1922, German botanist Rudolf Schlechter published his 95-page Orchidaceae Powellianae Panamenses (Panama orchid collections by C. Powell): principally on the basis ofPowell's efforts. Powell's work remains relevant not only because his records document valuable scientific data, but they continue to provide material for study – many of his digitized herbarium specimens are freely available online via virtual herbaria.

In 1926, Powell donated his world-class orchid garden (orchidarium) to the renowned MBG of St. Louis, Missouri. Under Powell's direction, a Tropical Station was created by the MBG in Balboa, Panama; 7,000 plants from Powell's orchid garden populated the satellite operation. For the MBG, a snowball effect occurred in the tropics; orchid collecting began there in earnest and over the next 13 years, orchids from its Tropical Station would appreciably augment the collection of the parent garden in St. Louis. "Today, the Missouri Botanical Garden’s orchid collection represents one of the largest and finest in the United States."

On moving to Spain in 1997, he was appointed deputy director of the Ortega y Gasset Foundation's Centro Español de Relaciones Internacionales (CERI). In 2002 he joined the recently created Elcano Royal Institute, Spain's leading international relations think-tank, of which he is currently Director. Since September of that year he is also Professor of Contemporary Spanish History at the CEU San Pablo University (Madrid). Additionally, in 2007 he took part in the creation of the Fundación Transición Española and was appointed its first Director (he is currently its 2nd Vice President).

Powell has published six books and dozens of academic articles, including: El piloto del cambio (Planeta, 1991), a study of the role of the king and the monarchy in Spain's transition to democracy; the biography Juan Carlos of Spain. Self-made monarch (Macmillan, 1996); and España en Democracia, 1975-2000 (Plaza & Janes, 2001), a general history of Spain since Franco's death which is widely regarded as the standard text on the period. His latest book is El Amigo Americano. España y Estados Unidos: de la dictadura a la democracia, a study of Spanish-US relations from Nixon to Reagan (1969-1989), which was published by Galaxia Gutenberg in April 2011.

In the course of his academic career, he has lectured in over thirty countries in Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia.

Powell was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to UK/Spanish relations.