Walter Brown Shelley

Walter Brown Shelley, MD PhD (always known as “Shelley” to his friends and family), died at home on Friday 30 January 2009, from cancer.

Born on the 6 February 1917, he developed into a brilliant clinician and a yet more brilliant and enterprising researcher. He published almost 1000 papers and six books. He achieved a worldwide reputation in his field and was first professor, then chairman of the renowned department of dermatology in the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He attracted not just the cream of his specialty in his native country, but many scores of privileged young dermatologists from the United Kingdom and other English-speaking centres. His brilliance as a diagnostician was remarkable, and his creative masterpieces in elucidating a wide variety of clinical and laboratory problems were awe inspiring.

To have studied with Walter Shelley and his colleague, competitor, and lifelong friend Albert Kligman was to have touched gold.

Always rapidly moving, physically, at nearly …