Victor Paschkis

The New York Times, June 20, 1991 Victor Paschkis, 93, A Retired Professor And Pacifist, Is Dead By GLENN FOWLER

Dr. Victor Paschkis, a retired professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University and a lifelong pacifist, died on Tuesday at the Frederick (Pa.) Mennonite Home, where he lived. He was 93 years old.

He died of pneumonia, his family said.

Dr. Paschkis, a native of Vienna who held three engineering degrees from the Institute of Technology there, came to the United States in 1938. Brought up as a Roman Catholic, he became a Quaker and an outspoken opponent of the development of nuclear weapons and in 1949 he founded the Society for Social Responsibility in Science. Honored by Association

In 1986, the American Association for the Advancement of Science gave Dr. Paschkis its Scientific Freedom and Responsibiliy Award for his "pioneering efforts to establish the principle that scientists and engineers have a personal responsibility for the social consequences of their professional activity." In the same year the American Society of Mechanical Engineers gave him its Founders Award.

At Columbia's School of Engineering, he was the technical director of the Heat and Mass Flow Analyzer Laboratory for a quarter-century before he retired in 1966. After retiring, he was active in the Society of Friends Fellowship House in Philadelphia and its Fellowship Farm in Pottstown, Pa.

Dr. Paschkis's first wife, the former Susanne Mugdan, died in 1959. His second wife, the former Marjorie Penney, who was the director of Fellowship House and Fellowship Farm, died in 1983.

He is survived by a son, Albert, of Gwynedd Valley, Pa., six grandchlldren and six great-grandchildren.

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