Masashi Kawasaki (69), University of Virginia Professor of Biology, passed away in transport to the UVA Hospital on Sunday, May 18 from fatal injuries caused by an auto accident in Madison County in Virginia that day.

Masashi was born in June of 1955 in Tokyo, Japan. After receiving his Ph.D. in Tokyo, he became a postdoc first at Washington University in St. Louis (Nobuo Suga lab) and then at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography in San Diego (Walter Heiligenberg lab), then he came to Charlottesville as a professor of biology in 1990 and has been teaching/doing research for the past 35 years at UVA. He was a specialist in electric fishes, uncovering fundamental design principles of the brain using African and South American electric fishes which possess one of the most extraordinary methods of communication and behavior in the animal world. His curiosity and love for animals of all kinds made his famous Animal Behavior Laboratory Course both interesting and insightful. This lab was extremely popular among students, and he ended up winning multiple teaching awards.

Masashi was raised in a musical family. His father Masaru Kawasaki (a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor) was a renowned composer/flute teacher in Japan who studied composition at The Juilliard School for one semester under Vincent Persichetti. His mother Taeko (98) still plays the violin beautifully. His grandfather Yutaka Kawasaki was an opera singer who studied in Italy for 3 years before World War II. Masashi’s musical ear helped his scientific research as well as his music life. He started to learn double bass at UVA and joined the UVA Symphony. Playing in the Symphony with the music faculty and talented students was one of the greatest delights of his life. His encouragement made his wife Yasuko come back to music after years of her having a hard time adapting to a foreign culture, and she became a community oboe player in and around Charlottesville.

He was a kind, gentle, caring, warm-hearted, sometimes funny, generous person to everybody, helping people in trouble (especially struggling students), fixing anything and everything as a handyman, creating ingenious things (such as a portable foldable electric double bass), and building a beautiful Japanese community in Charlottesville using his woodworking/electronics/plumbing skills and creativity for the benefit of the weekly Japanese Library at his home and various seasonal festivals/events for the community. He is survived by wife Yasuko (69), daughter Tomomi (41), son Daigo (37), brother Masaya (67) and mother Taeko (98).