WORCESTER-Vitold Arnett, MD, PhD, formerly of Tenafly, NJ, died Thursday, March 3rd in the Christopher House of Worcester after a battle with cancer. He leaves a brother, Joseph of Westbury, NY. A sister, Julia predeceased him. He was a retired psychiatrist, who donated greatly to the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and to Clark University.
He was born Vitautas Suchackas on May 9, 1914, the son of Adam and Mary (Krakauskiute) Suchackas and was educated in Worcester schools. In the 1930s, he was hired by Clark Professor Hudson Hoagland, Chairman of Biology and Founder of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in 1944. Hoagland hired the young Arnett to drive a car full of physiological recording equipment back and forth from Clark to Worcester State Hospital, where Hoagland was making some of the first measurements of brain electrical activity in mentally ill patients.
Seeing the young man’s potential Hoagland arranged for Arnett to receive a scholarship to Clark University. After graduation in 1935 Arnett earned a doctorate degree in biology at the University of Rochester. He received a medical degree at Cornell University and served his country in the Army as a physician. Dr. Arnett moved to New York City where he practiced psychiatry for more than 35 years. He retired and moved to Tenafly, New Jersey.
An avid reader throughout his life, in 1993, Dr. Arnett saw an article in Scientific American about genetic research at the Worcester Foundation and recalled how Hudson Hoagland had given him a start on his career path. Through the years, he made a major donation to the Worcester Foundation to establish the Vitold Arnett Professorship in cell biology and a leadership gift to Clark University to Fund the Vitold Arnett ’35 Research Laboratory in the new science building. He will be remembered as an intense man of many intellectual pursuits, who was possessed of an abiding faith in the power of science to improve the human condition. He lived modestly, and returned his life’s earnings to the two institutions that had launched his career.
A graveside service will be held at a later date. O’CONNOR BROTHERS FUNERAL HOME, 592 Park Avenue is directing the arrangements.