Paul A. Pietsch died on November 26, 2009 at the age of 80. A native of Depression-era New York City, he was the first of four children. His father died when he was 6, and he dropped out of school when he was in the 10th grade. Paul Pietsch joined the army in 1946 and credited the G.I. Bill for providing him with the means to an education. After earning his GED while in the Army, he continued his education following his discharge, receiving a bachelor’s degree in biology from Syracuse University in 1954 and a Ph.D. in anatomy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1960.

Dr. Pietsch came to Indiana University in 1970 as an associate professor of optometry and was promoted to professor in 1978. He taught optometry students and medical students while pursuing his primary research interests in regeneration and in the relationship between the brain and the mind. He shared his research with the scientific world through publication in professional journals but he also believed that scientists have the obligation to share knowledge with the non-scientific public. His article “Shuffle Brain,” about brain transplants in amphibians as a test of the language of the brain and of memory, was originally published in the May 1972 issue of Harper’s Magazine and later won the 1972 Medical Journalism Award from the American Medical Association. Popular interest in Dr. Pietsch’s research culminated in an August 1973 interview on the television show 60 Minutes.

Over the years, Dr. Pietsch was a beloved mentor to thousands of students, the author of nearly 100 publications, and the winner of numerous awards, including twelve awards for outstanding teaching. A demanding but enthusiastic teacher and a rigorous and exacting scientist, Dr. Pietsch was an intellectual in the broadest sense of the word, with interests ranging from Civil War history to the space program. Although he retired from classroom teaching in 1994, he continued to come to the office every day until illness made it impossible.

His passion in retirement was an extension of his belief that science should be available not just to scientists. This passion resulted in his award-winning Web site, Shufflebrain, described as “a polycultural collection on the biology of memory, perception and a few other items.” This site has had an astonishing 29.5 million hits since July 1995. Touching testimony to the international influence of Dr. Pietsch’s Web site is evident in pleas from people afflicted with rare neurological conditions, or even more touching, from the parents of children suffering from these conditions. He researched conditions such as agenesis of the corpus callosum and Acute Zonal Occult Outer Retinopathy, translating the information he found into comprehensible terms for sufferers worldwide and referring them to nearby specialists for treatment. Dr. Pietsch was in constant communication with people around the world who needed help interpreting the language of science as it applied to them in the most personal of ways.