CARL VON ESSEN

von ESSEN--Carl Francois. Carl von Essen died peacefully while sleeping on February 5, 2025 with his wife Manisha Roy and daughter Neila Willow by his bedside. He was born on May 17, 1926, in Tokyo, Japan. His parents were Carl Otto von Essen, Chancellor of Swedish Legation to Japan and mother Kerstin Sofia von Essen nee Olbers. In 1927 Carl's father was transferred to San Francisco where Carl spent his early life, attending Lowell High School in San Francisco, University of California at Berkeley, Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and Stanford University School of Medicine, receiving a BA with "great distinction" in 1948 and an M.D. in 1952. In 1950 he married Medha Yodh (1927-2007), a graduate student in biochemistry at Stanford. They had three children, Kamal Christina, 1952 (deceased 2015), Eric Carl, 1954 (deceased 1997), and Neila Ingalill, 1957. The couple divorced in 1976. During 1954-1956, Carl served in the U.S Navy Medical Corps, and received US citizenship. Carl was faculty at Yale Medical School 1959 -1969. In 1964 he spent a year at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, South India, and initiated clinical trials of the treatment of oral cancer and trials around smallpox in Madras, now Chennai. In 1969 he was appointed professor and chief of radiation oncology at the University of California School of Medicine, San Diego (UCSD). In 1976 he spent a sabbatical year at the Swiss Institute for Cancer Research (ISREC) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Soon afterwards he became head of a new department at the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research (SIN) to carry out experimental cancer therapy with negative pi-mesons and protons. Previously Carl spent a year at the University of New Mexico Medical School as a research professor working with the first medical beam of negative pi-mesons. In 1977 he started the clinical part of the pion therapy project in Switzerland and taught radiobiology at the Medical School in Basel as adjunct professor. In 1980 he received the Swiss Cancer Prize. After the end of this project Dr. von Essen joined the World Health Organization in Geneva. He organized postgraduate training programs in clinical oncology in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, both countries in political strife. In 1979 Carl married Manisha Roy, Ph.D., then studying for a post-graduate diploma in Analytical Psychology at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. They returned to the U.S. in 1985. He worked for ten more years in a small hospital and as Consultant at Massachusetts General Hospital and as adjunct professor at Brown University. Carl wrote 112 scientific papers and exhibits and co-edited two books. After retirement in 1995 he wrote twelve more books including memoirs and subjects such as his life long- love of angling, plus travels, nature and spirituality. Carl von Essen is survived by his wife Manisha Roy, retired professor, Jungian analyst and writer in Cambridge, one daughter, Neila Willow, a primary educator in Oakland, CA, and two granddaughters, Kerstin Muilenburg, a professional scuba diver in Maui, HI, and Maura Eve Willow, a graduate student at USF.