Joseph A. Silverman ’52

Joe died May 7, 2012, at the Jewish Home in Rockleigh, N.J., from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 81.

Born in Clifton, N.J., April 24, 1931, he was valedictorian of his Clifton High School class.

At Princeton, he belonged to Elm Club. Though majoring in biology, he won a prize in Italian and cited historian “Buzzer” Hall and art historian John Rupert Martin as his favorite professors. He earned a medical degree at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and did a pediatric internship at Children’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. During Air Force duty in Labrador, he volunteered as a pediatrician with the Grenfell mission, flying to Indian villages to treat children without access to medical care.

A distinguished pediatrician and renowned international eating-disorder expert with a clinical and academic interest in the characteristics and treatment of anorexia nervosa, Joe maintained a private practice for over four decades and held a ­faculty appointment at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Joe was predeceased by his beloved wife of 43 years, Joy Myers Silverman, and is survived by his four children; his brother and sister; and four grandchildren.