Themistocles Damasceno Joaquim D'Silva

1932 - 2024

Themistocles Damasceno Joaquim D'Silva

July 18, 1932 - May 13, 2024

Chapel Hill, North Carolina - Themistocles D'Silva, known to loved ones as either Themis, Tim, Dad, or Papa, died peacefully in his sleep on May 13, 2024 after a brief illness. After early years in Uganda, Tim moved with his family back to their ancestral village of Arossim, Goa. In 1959, he came to the United States, earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the Catholic University of America and married Rose Marie de Sousa on July 24, 1965. They began their family near Worcester, Massachusetts, moving the following year to West Virginia, where he started work as a research chemist with Union Carbide. In 1981, the family moved to North Carolina as the center relocated to the Research Triangle Park.

As a synthetic organic chemist, Tim discovered dozens of new compounds that resulted in 70 patents being issued, the most notable being Thiodicarb Insecticide/Ovicide that was marketed under the brand name LARVIN®. These achievements contributed to his elevation to Fellow in the late 1980s in both the American Institute of Chemists and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Outside of work, Tim pursued a broad range of interests, including tennis, badminton, table tennis, chess, bridge, gardening, stamps, coins, genealogy, reading, and cooking dinner whenever he would come home from work before Mom. After retiring in 1993, Tim researched and published two books: The Black Box of Bhopal in 2006, and Unravelling History: A History of Arossim, Goa, initially published in 2011.

Tim is survived by his four children, Marisa D'Silva Whitesell (Chapel Hill), Karena D'Silva (Chapel Hill), Carl D'Silva (wife Joni, sons Walker and Blake, Chicago) and Marc D'Silva (wife Chinar, Portugal), and five grandchildren, Blaise, Romy and Carmen Whitesell, and Caia and Eva D'Silva, as well as one brother, Oliver D'Silva (Arossim, Goa) and one sister Jessie Saldanha (Arossim, Goa), and many nieces and nephews.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be concelebrated by Friar Tim Kulbicki, OFM Conv. and Rev. Msgr. John Wall on Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 10am at the Newman Catholic Student Center Parish, 218 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, NC. In lieu of flowers, please direct donations to KidneyCure, www.kidneycure.org (a research organization that supports young researchers to find a cure for kidney disease), or to a charity of your choice.

The D'Silva family is under the care of Walker's Funeral Home of Chapel Hill.