Ivan Roy Schwab

Ivan Roy Schwab, MD, died of heart failure secondary to cardiac amyloidosis on December 13, 2025, at his home in Fair Oaks, California. He passed peacefully, surrounded by family. Ivan was born in West Virginia in January 1948 to the late J. Wayne Schwab and Helen Schwab. He was raised in Kingwood, WV, and graduated from West Virginia University in 1969 with a degree in biology. With a pharmacist father and two older physician brothers, Ivan went along with the trend and four years later completed medical school at WVU. He then headed west, completing his internship in San Jose, and his ophthalmology residency and fellowships in San Francisco. In 1982 he returned to West Virginia and served as a professor at the WVU Medical School Eye Department for seven years. His final relocation was back to California for a professorship at the University of California-Davis Medical School in the Department of Ophthalmology; he retired in 2013 and then served as an emeritus professor until his death.
Blessed with an inquisitive mind and a disciplined work ethic, Ivan became Doctor Schwab, a notable physician, teacher and researcher. He was author or co-author of over 200 scientific papers and four texts in the field of eye care. His interest in the myriad visual systems of the animal kingdom, including their evolution, led him in 2012 to research and write "Evolution's Witness: How Eyes Evolved", a book praised far beyond the ophthalmic world as a work valuable to anyone interested in biology. He was invited to present a TED talk that year about the book. In addition to his writing, he served for eight years as a director on the American Board of Ophthalmology, the organization which "board certifies" ophthalmologists.
Dr. Schwab was also on the editorial boards of the journal "Cornea" and the British Journal of Ophthalmology, for which he provided the cover photos, including a brief description about them, from 2000-2008. It was this task for the BJO that led to his moment of fame beyond the eye world in 2016, when he was selected to receive an Ig Nobel Prize, awarded annually for research that "first makes you laugh and then makes you think", for his reflection on whether woodpeckers get headaches from the repeated force felt by their brains as they pound away at a tree trunk. The prize is presented at Harvard University by "real" Nobel laureates and, in the spirit of the event, Ivan wore a hat fashioned by his wife and designed to look like a woodpecker.
As a corneal specialist, he had an interest in restoring vision to people with corneal surface injuries not amenable to current treatment, in other words, finding something to help blinded people to see again. Years of research, including a year on sabbatical in a lab in Australia, led to the development of a bio-engineered tissue that was successful in initial trials. Doing this research also required him to coordinate an association which still exists between the veterinary and medical schools at UC-Davis. In addition, he consulted with several zoos and aquariums regarding eye problems of various animals.
But Ivan wasn't just Doctor Schwab. During his time in the emergency department as an intern, he met a nurse whom he started dating. Following his internship, an around-the-world trip cemented things, and he and Nora were married in 1977. Six years later, as he began his teaching career, the arrival of a son set him on the path of learning the usual lessons that children teach their parents. And his grandchildren, born after his retirement, would rather exchange making faces with him than hear about avian optics, and he loved it. He left too early in their young lives.
He and Nora were avid nature lovers and traveled extensively exploring the wonders of this world, from eclipses to birds to you-name-it; he was an accomplished amateur photographer and took spectacular photos on their travels. He was a sports fan, especially of the West Virginia University Mountaineer teams, and he spoke almost weekly with his brother about their prospects, but he also had a keen interest in baseball, especially the history of the Negro leagues. He was far from one-dimensional.
Ivan is survived by his wife of 48 years, Nora, his son Nathan, a brother Larry, and three grandchildren, and was predeceased by his parents and an older brother, Lowell.
Memorial gifts may be directed to the Ivan R. Schwab Comparative Ophthalmology Advancement Endowed Fund, which Ivan established to advance excellence in comparative ophthalmology, the study of eye disease across species to better understand vision, biology, and treatment in both animals and humans. Copy and paste this link to donate: https://give.ucdavis.edu/MOPH/125137