Dr. Richard Joseph (Dick) Havel, renowned research scientist, devoted husband and father passed away quietly at his home in Greenbrae on April 9th. Dick was born to Joseph and Anna (Nan) Havel in Seattle, Washington where he attended Sealth High School, played the clarinet and excelled in mathematics and science. He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he earned a Bachelors of Science degree and met his wife Virginia (Gini). They fell in love after their first date and were married in 1945. He earned a medical degree along with a Masters degree in Chemistry at University of Oregon Medical School in 1949. After a residency in Internal Medicine at Cornell University Medical Center in New York City, Dick began his long career in biomedical research at the National Heart Institute of the Public Health Service in Bethesda, Maryland. He joined the faculty in the School of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco, in 1956 where he continued his groundbreaking research on lipid metabolism and lipoprotein biology. His research had a profound impact on the understanding of human disease including the role of disorders of lipid metabolism in hyperlipidemia and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Dr. Havel refined and optimized the methodology for separating good cholesterol (HDL) from bad cholesterol (LDL) and recognized the role that the different fractions of lipoproteins play in heart disease. His paper on the lipoproteins in human serum published in 1955 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation remains among the most cited publications in the field of lipid biology. His research accomplishments also include one of the first studies demonstrating that lowering LDL cholesterol in the blood led to a reduction of atherosclerosis.

He served as Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) at UCSF from 1973 to 1992 where he trained numerous postdoctoral researchers and junior faculty in biomedical research. He was a mentor and advisor on cholesterol and lipoprotein metabolism to Drs. Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1984 and with whom Dr. Havel published several original scientific papers and a seminal chapter on Lipoproteins and Lipid Transport in the textbook Metabolic Control and Disease. Dr. Havel's career included sabbaticals at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. During his career, he published over 300 scientific papers and was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in 1983 and the Institute of Medicine in 1989. He served as Editor-in-Chief and Chair of the Advisory Board for the Journal of Lipid Research. He was also active in the organization of the Deuel Conference on Lipids and the conference has included the annual "Havel Lecture" since 2002. He received many awards and honors including the Bristol-Myers Squibb/Mead Johnson Award for Distinguished Achievement in Nutrition Research and the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Heart Association Council on Arteriosclerosis.

After returning from sabbatical in Sweden in 1962, he and Gini lived in Ross, California, where they raised four children. He was also a longtime resident of Inverness, California near the Point Reyes National Seashore, where he and Gini built a home overlooking Tomales Bay. Here, Dick loved entertaining and lively games of tennis with family and friends. While living in West Marin, he was an avid gardener, he enjoyed hiking, birding and foraging for wild mushrooms. He also had a longtime love of classical music and he and Gini were subscribing members of the San Francisco Symphony. Following his retirement, he remained active in the lipoprotein field and played a good game of tennis well into his 80's. He and Gini traveled all over the world, and particularly enjoyed visiting places with a rich natural history of flora and fauna. He is survived by Gini, his wife of nearly seventy years, his four children, Chris (Mill Valley, CA), Tim (Boston, MA), Peter (Davis, CA), and Julianne (San Rafael, CA), as well as his three grandchildren, Jocelyn, Tyler, and Cameron, and his niece, Tracy Grant, and grandniece, Mélanie Grant, of Nicasio, CA. Dick will be missed by his family and many friends and colleagues who will remember him as a kind and gentle man with a keen sense of humor along with a supportive and mentoring spirit. A memorial honoring Dr. Havel will be held at UCSF within the next 2-3 months followed on a later date by another memorial for family and friends in Marin County.

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Published by San Francisco Chronicle from May 5 to May 8, 2016.