Obituary: Barry Paw (1962-2017) ​

Martina Muckenthaler, Ioav Cabantchik, Clara Camaschella​

After the recent loss of Professor Eliezer Rachmilewitz, the hematology community mourns the death of Professor Barry Paw, another eminent scientist working in the field of red cells and iron, who sadly passed away on Friday, December 27, 2017. Barry Paw, MD, PhD was a well-known scientist among hematologists working on red cells, particularly thanks to his seminal contributions to the biology of erythrocyte development, mitochondrial iron and heme metabolism. Barry was a refugee from Burma who at the age of seven immigrated to the US with his parents in search of a better life. He grew up in California, where he attended public schools and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, attaining an MD/PhD at UCLA while studying the molecular basis of Tay-Sachs disease. For his medical residency, he moved to the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Department at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. While in the lab of Leonard Zon, he introduced the zebrafish as an animal model to investigate erythroid development. Barry showed a special interest in exploring intracellular iron trafficking and heme metabolism, and their relevance to human diseases. As an Associate Professor of Medicine and Investigator at Harvard, he continued that line of research. His rigorous studies on red cell developmental biology resulted in the identification of a number of novel genes and their function, discoveries that are relevant to the understanding of red cell disorders such as sideroblastic anemia, erythropoietic protoporphyria and Diamond-Blackfan anemia.

Barry was not only a brilliant scientist and teacher but a most kind and humble personality who will be missed in the hematology community worldwide.

Correspondence: Clara Camaschella ([email protected])