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Joseph Slowinski S.F. biologist, expert on
snakes
David
Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Wednesday, September 19,
2001
©2002 San
Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/19/MN192810.DTL
Joseph B. Slowinski, a noted San Francisco biologist and one of the
world's leading experts on venomous snakes, died from a paralyzing
snakebite on Sept. 12 while leading an expedition in the jungles of
northern Burma. He was 38.
As associate curator of herpetology at the California Academy of
Sciences, Dr. Slowinski was known as a bold, high-spirited scientist
and a brilliant biologist whose studies of the evolutionary history of
the cobra family have proved uniquely valuable to science.
His fatal encounter with a krait, a member of the cobra group,
occurred when a member of his Burmese team brought him a sack
containing a single small reptile whose coloration resembled a
familiar harmless snake.
Dr. Slowinski reached into the sack, and the snake bit him
painlessly as he grasped, according to an e-mail message from Douglas
J. Long, the acting chairman of the academy's ornithology department,
who was collecting bird specimens on the expedition.
Dr. Slowinski quickly recognized the snake as a krait, and told his
colleagues what first aid he would need quickly. But the expedition
was mired in the jungle mud of monsoon weather, 8 miles on foot from
the nearest radio and inaccessible to helicopter rescue.
Within hours Dr. Slowinski became progressively paralyzed from the
krait's neurotoxic venom, and his breathing stopped. Despite efforts
to keep his heart beating, he died the following morning, Long said in
his message.
Aside from collecting, classifying and studying cobras and
discovering some 18 new species of reptiles during a dozen expeditions
to Burma, Dr. Slowinski taught graduate students at San Francisco
State University and the University of Yangon in Burma's capital,
where he maintained a second home.
"For a herpetologist, finding a new species is always
exciting. For me, finding a new cobra species is the ultimate
discovery," he wrote recently in the academy's California Wild
quarterly magazine.
"Joe's huge collection of reptile species at the academy from
all parts of the country are unique and priceless," said Robert
Drewes, chairman of the academy's Herpetology Department. They have
added important scientific insights into an Asian region whose
wildlife is so poorly known, Drewes said.
"He had such a knack for breaking down barriers with
everyone," recalled Rhonda Lucas, one of his graduate students at
San Francisco State, who had been on earlier expeditions to Burma with
Dr. Slowinski's team. "He'd joke with everyone, play ball with
them, have a beer with them, and invariably ask his Burmese field
teams, in Burmese, 'Where do I catch snakes?'
"He could even play golf -- sort of -- with high Burmese
officials when he needed to negotiate for permits," Lucas said.
"And he was a wonderful teacher."
Dr. Slowinski was born in Kansas City, Mo., received his doctorate
from the University of Miami, and after teaching at universities in
Louisiana, he joined the California Academy of Sciences staff in 1997.
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the National
Geographic Society, Dr. Slowinski was engaged in a long-term,
comprehensive survey of snakes in Burma. He was also a principal
researcher with the academy's China Natural History Project, a study
of biodiversity in southern China's Yunnan Province.
During a pause in the monsoon and three days after his death, Dr.
Slowinski's body was brought by helicopter to Myitkyina, the capital
of Kochin state in northern Burma, where, at his family's request, he
was cremated in a brief ceremony accompanied by Buddhist prayers. The
remains, accompanied by other members of the expedition, will be
returned to San Francisco.
Dr. Slowinski is survived by his mother, Martha Crow of New York;
his father, Ronald Slowinski of Kansas City, and a sister, Rachel
Slowinski of Los Angeles.
E-mail David Perlman at dperlman@sfchronicle.com.
©2002 San
Francisco Chronicle Page A - 20