Dr. Joseph Gayles Jr., Morehouse visionary

Dr. Joseph Gayles Jr. accomplished many things during his long career, but the item that topped his résumé was his part in creating the Morehouse School of Medicine.

As a chemistry professor at Morehouse College in the early 1970s, Dr. Gayles led feasibility studies that resulted in $3 million in federal funding to support the start-up of the medical school.

“Dr. Gayles played a key role,” said Dr. Louis Sullivan, the former U.S. health and human services secretary who was founding dean and president of Morehouse School of Medicine.

Dr. Gayles was a “great team player and very intense and committed” to the plan to start the new medical school for minorities, Dr. Sullivan said.

Dr. Gayles, 71, died of heart failure Thursday at his home in southwest Atlanta. The funeral will be 11 a.m. Wednesday at Cascade United Methodist Church. Murray Brothers Funeral Home of Atlanta is in charge of arrangements.

Dr. Gayles was reared in Birmingham and earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry and mathematics from Dillard University in New Orleans. He then earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Brown University.

He worked at IBM’s research lab for about three years before going to Morehouse to teach. From 1977 to 1983, he was president of Talladega College in Talladega, Ala., before returning to Morehouse School of Medicine to become vice president of institutional advancement until 1996.

Dr. Gayles enjoyed keeping up with politics, playing with his grandchildren, painting and taking photographs, said his daughter, Monica Dorsey of Fairburn.

“He often would carry two cameras,” she said.

Other survivors are a son, Jonathan Gayles of Atlanta; and two grandchildren.