Alireza Pahlavi | Son of Iranian shah, 44

Alireza Pahlavi, 44, youngest son of the late shah of Iran, was found dead Tuesday of an apparent suicide at his home in Boston, after he had "struggled for years to overcome his sorrow," his brother said.

Mr. Pahlavi died from a gunshot wound that apparently was self-inflicted, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk District Attorney's Office. Boston police said officers responding to a 911 call found the man dead in his home in the city's South End area shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday. A police spokesman did not know who made the call.

Fardia Pars, who is close to Reza Pahlavi, said by phone from Paris that Mr. Pahlavi went into a deep depression after the 2001 death of his sister Leila, who was found in a London hotel room at age 31 after overdosing on barbiturates. "He became a different person," Pars said.

Former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in the 1979 revolution. He fled Iran and wandered from country to country, ill with cancer, and eventually died in Egypt in 1980. Alireza Pahlavi was born in Tehran in 1966 and attended school there until 1979.

From 1979 to 1981, he attended schools in New York and Cairo, and from 1981 to 1984 attended Mount Greylock Regional High School in Williamstown, Mass. He studied music as an undergraduate at Princeton University and ancient Iranian studies as a graduate student at Columbia University. He did postgraduate work at Harvard University in ancient Iranian studies and philology. He was not studying at the university at the time of his death, a Harvard spokesman said. - AP