John M. Pawelek ’68 PhD

John M. Pawelek ’68 PhD, of Hamden, Conn.; May 31, of a heart attack. He was a member of the research faculty in the department of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine for four decades. He authored nearly 200 peer-reviewed papers and was a cofounder and past president of the Pan American Society for Pigment Cell Research (PASPCR). His research examined factors regulating skin pigmentation and, in later years, the mechanism driving metastasis in melanoma skin cancer. He won several awards for this work, including the PASPCR Career Achievement Award, the International Federation of Pigment Cell Societies’ inaugural Henry Stanley Raper Medal, and the Japanese Society for Pigment Cell Research Takeuchi Medal. He lectured frequently at scientific conferences in the U.S. and abroad, including a recent tour of medical schools in Iran. He was active in his church, the Unitarian Society of New Haven, where he sang in the choir, acted in plays, and taught Sunday school. He enjoyed singing in the New Haven Chorale and after-hours piano jams at pigment cell conferences, and had fond memories of playing piano once with Fats Domino and marching the last five miles of the Selma to Montgomery march behind Dr. King. He is survived by his wife, Linda; three sons and daughters-in-law; and five grandchildren.