MILAN USKOKOVIC

USKOKOVIC--Milan R., Ph.D. died on May 11, 2015, five weeks to the day after the death of his beloved wife, Nada, in Towson, Maryland. Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, he was a member of the resistance during World War II. After the war, he and Nada met at the Belgrade Polytechnic University where they both studied chemical engineering. They immigrated to the United States after he received a scholarship to Clark University. After receiving his Ph.D. in organic chemistry, they moved to Upper Montclair, New Jersey, where they resided until 2011. Dr. Uskokovic is considered a leading researcher in Vitamin D synthesis. Chemistry was his passion. He often quoted his fellow New Jersey inventor Thomas Edison; "I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun." He has sixty-six patents to his name, and was inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 1994. He was the Director of Natural Products Research at Hoffmann La Roche. Among his accomplishments, he was on the advisory or editorial boards of six professional journals, a member of the American Chemical Society, and the New York Academy of Sciences, and a Regents Professor at the University of California. A laboratory at the Brown University, School of Medicine, Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island was dedicated in honor of his research mentorship. He is survived by his daughter, Moira Bogrov, M.D., her husband, Michael Bogrov, M.D., of Baltimore, MD; Lila Vidger, Ph.D., her husband, Donald Vidger, M.D., of Seattle, WA; five grandchildren, Samuel and Caroline Bogrov, and Madeline, Linea, and Graham Vidger; and his sister Vuka Markovic, of Belgrade, Serbia. His son, Charles Uskokovic, died in 2011.