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André Bruwer was many things, often to the same people. But many others likely only knew him for one of his passionate pursuits.

The native South African and longtime Tucsonan was a physician, a Mayo Clinic-trained radiologist credited with doing the first mammograms in Tucson.

But more people probably knew him for the pacifist anti-war and anti-nuclear stances he expressed in writing, often in the Arizona Daily Star's letters to the editor and guest editorials.

He was also a published medical author.

And there was a whole other group only in recent years learning about his unusual, striking photographs of plants using e-rays.

Bruwer, who would have been 90 on Oct. 23, died Monday.

He graduated from the University of Cape Town's school of medicine in 1942 and was in the South African army when his life took a change in direction.

Daughter Jennifer LaForgia said Bruwer was en route to Egypt as part of the Allied Forces when he read a book about the famed Mayo Clinic.

"It was a book aboard ship, about the Doctors Mayo, and their story so affected him that he applied to be on the staff of the Mayo Clinic," said LaForgia, who still lives in Rochester, Minn., home of the clinic.

She said his first application was rejected, but that he tried again and was accepted.

Bruwer and his family came to Tucson in 1957, in part, LaForgia said, because it reminded him of Cape Town.

Besides pioneering the use of mammography here, he later became known for forcefully opposing the Vietnam War, the nuclear-weapons buildup and related issues.

LaForgia said her father's views were undoubtedly colored by his grandparents' experiences in the Boer War.

"His family suffered terribly in the Boer War and I think that affected him for life. His grandfather was shot," said LaForgia.

While his positions were stated forcefully, LaForgia said he also had a sense of humor.

Just days before he died, she said a friend came to visit and assured him she was going to vote the way he would like in the presidential race. "She said she was 'going to do the right thing. Don't worry.' "

"But my dad leaned forward and said, 'You don't need to vote the right way, you need to vote the left way.' "

LaForgia said he combined his love of gardening with photography. He was an active gardener, once unknowingly planting a South African plant that "was a relative of marijuana" in the yard, and he was on the Tucson Botanical Gardens board.

Just last year he had a show of his X-ray photographs at Arts Eye, said Mary Findysz, owner of the gallery and Photographic Works, 3550 E. Grant Road.

"He does what he calls skiagraphics — it's a word that means 'shadow drawings,' " said Findysz.

"The amazing thing to us was they were way more than X-rays. These images had movement and you saw into the little passages in the flowers.

"My staff adored him. He seemed like he could be your grandfather, your uncle, your professor," said Findysz. "If there was subject matter he was interested in, he had a real opinion about it. But as a man, he seemed really gentle."