Vincent J. Cristofalo, Ph.D.

Obituary:

Wistar emeritus professor Vincent J. Cristofalo, Ph.D., died of leukemia on May 8, 2006, at the age of 73. Cristofalo, an internationally recognized expert on aging, was an active member of Wistar's faculty from 1963 to 1990.

He began his career in 1963 at Wistar, investigating aging at the cellular level with colleague Leonard Hayflick, Ph.D. In 1978, he became the founding director of the Institute of Aging at the University of Pennsylvania, while retaining his affiliation with Wistar. In 1990, he left Wistar and Penn to found the Institute of Aging at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, which was then part of Allegheny Health Systems. Cristofalo became president of Lankenau Institute for Medical Research in 1999 and served in that position until 2004. At the time of his death, he was a senior investigator at Lankenau and a professor of pathology, anatomy, and cell biology at Jefferson Medical College.

Cristofalo was a past president of the American Federation for Aging Research and The Gerontological Society of America. His honors included awards from the American Aging Association, the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, the American Federation for Aging Research, the National Institute on Aging, and the Gerontological Society of America.

He enjoyed Big Five basketball, making wine in his garage, and a good cigar, and he was a passionate sailor, according to an obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer . He is survived by his wife Margaret; daughters Elizabeth, Margaret, Jean Looney, Carolyn Muttreja, Catherine, and Helen; grandchildren Nicholas, Jack, Juliana, and Justin; and sisters Marie and Rosalie Foster.