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Wednesday, September 19, 2001 (SF Chronicle)
Joseph Slowinski S.F. biologist, expert on snakes
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor


   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 [log in to unmask] 
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Copyright 2001 SF Chronicle

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