In Memoriam: 2019

Ramendra Bhattacharyya was a member of the MAA for 53 years, and his death was reported to the MAA in 2019. He earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University and was an emeritus associate professor of Mathematics at Pacific University in Oregon.

Karen D. King passed away on December 24, 2019, at the age of 48. King was the program director in NSF's Education and Human Resources Directorate for several years, and previously taught at San Diego State University, Michigan State University, and New York University. She was a member of the MAA for 19 years. She also served as Director of Research for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. King was the AWM-MAA Etta Zuber Falconer Lecturer in 2012. Many remembrances of King’s life can be found on this tribute page.

William Boyce passed away on November 4, 2019, at the age of 88. He was a professor emeritus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a member of the MAA for 57 years. Boyce is known for his widely-used textbook, written with Richard C. DiPrima, Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems, currently in its 11th edition. More information about his life and career can be found in his obituary.

James A. Donaldson passed away on October 18, 2019, at the age of 78. He was Professor Emeritus at Howard University and a member of the MAA for 54 years. He was on the faculty at Howard University for 45 years, including serving as chairman of the mathematics department for 18 years then as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for over 12 years. Donaldson played vital role in the development of Howard’s Ph.D. program, which was the first doctoral program in mathematics at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). For the MAA, he served on committees focusing on minority participation and in Carriage House programming. Video interviews with Donaldson are included in the HistoryMakers archives, and more information about his life and career can be found in a remembrance from Howard University, a remembrance from the University of Illinois, and his obituary.

John Tate passed away on October 16, 2019, at the age of 94. Tate was on the faculty at Harvard University for 36 years and the University of Texas as Austin for 19 years, receiving emeritus honors from both institutions. He was also a member of the MAA for 49 years. In 2010, Tate received one of the highest honors in mathematics, the Abel Prize, for his seminal work in number theory. He also received the American Mathematical Society’s Cole Prize in Number Theory in 1956 and its Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 1995. In 2002-03, he shared the Wolf Prize in Mathematics with Mikio Sato. Significantly more information about his life and career can be found in this remembrance from the University of Texas, a 2011 interview with Tate in the AMS Notices, a post from Peter Woit, Tate’s New York Times obituary, and his Wikipedia page.

James (Jim) D. Gates passed away on October 10, 2019, at the age of 92. He served as the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) for 31 years. He was a member of the MAA for 65 years! Gates led the NCTM as it developed the original NCTM Standards in the late 1980’s, and received the Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. For the MAA, he served on the Committee for the Mathematical Education of Teachers. More information about his life and career can be found at the NCTM web site and his obituary.

Richard (Dick) Askey passed away on October 9, 2019, at the age of 86. He was Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin following his retirement in 2003, and a member of the MAA for 68 years. Askey was known as the foremost authority on special functions such as the Askey–Wilson polynomials. He was also an expert in the mathematics of Srinivasa Ramanujan, leading to being named an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Mathematical Society. Askey was also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the American Mathematical Society. In 1999 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. For the MAA, Askey participated in several sessions that MAA organized through the Preparing Mathematicians to Educate Teachers project during the mid-2000's. More information about his life and career can be found in a remembrance by David Bressoud and Askey’s obituary.

Helen Hoffman passed away on September 14, 2019, at the age of 87. She had a distinguished career teaching Math, Science, and Chemistry in Phoenix, Arizona, and was a member of the MAA for 61 years. Hoffman also taught at Ottawa University in Phoenix. More information about her life can be found in her obituary.

Richard Van Slyke passed away on August 30, 2019.  He was a Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at New York University (NYU)’s Tandon School of Engineering and a member of the MAA for 44 years.  Van Slyke was the first director of NYU’s Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications and was one of the founders of the Network Analysis Corporation.   More information about his career can be found in a remembrance published by NYU.

Colin Blyth passed away on August 22, 2019, at the age of 96. He was a member of the MAA for 48 years. Blyth was a professor at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) from 1950 until 1974 and then continued his career at Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario until his retirement in 1987. Blyth’s work as a statistician emerges in a number of places, including the Freakonomics blog, an appearance in the MAA’s “Who’s That Mathematician”, and as the scribe for a well-known book of lecture notes of Eric Lehmann. Blyth is remembered in this brief obituary.

Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, a groundbreaking mathematical physicist who was a pioneer in the discipline of chaos theory, passed away on June 30, 2019, at the age of 74. Feigenbaum was the Toyota Professor and director of the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology at Rockefeller University. He is perhaps best known for his research on period-doubling bifurcations, leading a universal constant 4.6692… known today as the first Feigenbaum constant. He also invented new fractal geometry methods for cartography. Feigenbaum was a MacArthur Fellow and he was awarded the Wolf Prize in physics. Extensive information about Feigenbaum’s life and career can be found in The Washington Post, the MacTutor History of Math archive, and a remembrance from Rockefeller University.

Mary Beaumont passed away on June 11, 2019, at the age of 86.   She was a member of the MAA for 62 years.  During her career, Beaumont taught mathematics at Ripon College, Carroll College, and at high schools in Michigan and Wisconsin.  More information about her life and career can be found in her obituary.

David Sherry passed away on June 6, 2019, at the age of 79. He received emeritus honors at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, after teaching there for 36 years and serving as Mathematics Department Chair for over 10 years. Sherry was a member of the MAA for 40 years, and he was very active in the Florida Section. He served as the section's Governor from 1989-1992 and held positions within the section as both President and Vice-President for 4-year colleges. Sherry was awarded the Section's Distinguished Service Award in 1996. More information about Sherry’s life and career can be found in his obituary.

Patricia (Pat) Lanusse Jones passed away on May 24, 2019, at the age of 84. She taught at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) and was a long-time member of the MAA. Jones was a creative champion in the training of K-12 mathematics teachers in Louisiana, leading the redesign of mathematics education courses at her institution, writing textbooks for those courses, and speaking at a variety of professional meetings. For the MAA, Jones was on the writing team for A Call for Change, published by the the MAA's Committee on the Mathematical Education of Teachers (COMET) in 1991. That report influenced the content and methods of mathematics courses taken by prospective teachers in college. In 1996, she was awarded the distinguished teaching award from Louisiana-Mississippi section of the MAA. More information about her life and career can be found in her obituary.

Eugene “Gene” Nichols passed away on May 2, 2019, at the age of 96. He was a professor of mathematics education at Florida State University until 1990 and a member of the MAA for 52 years. Nichols was known for building the mathematics education program at Florida State while serving as department head, as well as establishing a summer program in the late 1950’s for talented high school students supported by grants from the NSF. More information about his life and career can be found in his obituary.

Elwyn Berlekamp passed away on April 9, 2019, at the age of 78. He was a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the MAA for 53 years. He was a Putnam Fellow in 1961 as a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 1966 to 1971 he worked at Bell Labs, and the rest of his career was spent on the faculty at Berkeley. Berlekamp was known for his outstanding work in game theory, cryptography, and error correcting codes. Along with John H. Conway and Richard K. Guy, he authored the multi-volume set Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays in 1982, which laid the foundations for combinatorial game theory and included analyses of dots and boxes, as well as Go. In the 1980’s, he founded a company Cyclotomics, whose encoders and “Berlekamp decoders” became the standard for space communications used by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Berlekamp also successfully led a hedge fund for several years, applying complex mathematics to achieve outsized returns. A close friend of Martin Gardner, he was one of the founders of Gathering 4 Gardner and was on its board for many years. Berlekamp was also a key figure in the establishment of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI). Among his awards, he received the Claude E. Shannon Award from the IEEE in 1993. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996, and became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1999. He supported the MAA as a generous donor towards the new Martin Gardner lecture at MathFest. Significantly more information about his life and career can be found in an article from Berkeley, a tribute page at Gathering 4 Gardner, and his Wikipedia page.

Pam Crawford passed away suddenly on March 17, 2019, at the age of 63. She was on the faculty of Jacksonville University for 20 years, including her service as department chair. Crawford was a member of the MAA for 33 years, and contributed in many ways including representing Florida in the MAA Congress and serving on the Committee on SIGMAAs. She received the 2018 Distinguished Service Award from the Florida Section of the MAA as well as the 2015-16 Professor of the Year Award from Jacksonville University. A scholarship in Crawford’s name at Jacksonville University for mathematics students has been established. For more information about her life and career can be found in this remembrance posted at Jacksonville University, and her obituary.

Gilbert M. Helmberg passed away on February 18, 2019, at the age of 90. He was a professor at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and a member of the MAA for 22 years. A German announcement of his passing is available.

Thomas R. Butts passed away on January 26, 2019, at the age of 75. He was professor emeritus of mathematics education at the University of Texas at Dallas and a member of the MAA for 53 years. Butts was known for his expertise in posing mathematical problems and teaching problem-solving strategies. Throughout his career, he wrote questions for local and national mathematics contests, including the MAA's American Mathematics Competitions. Since 2014, Butts was the co-author of Advanced Quantitative Reasoning: Mathematics for the World Around Us, and he published other books and articles on problem solving throughout his career. In addition, he was on one of the teams that developed classroom materials related to the television show NUMB3RS. More information about his life and career can be found in his obituary.

Abraham Franck passed away on January 17, 2019, at the age of 100. He was a member of the MAA for 70 years! A specialist in error-correction codes and computer science, Franck taught at the University of Minnesota (where he received his Ph.D.) and Kansas State University. He worked for Engineering Research Associates of Sperry Rand and also Fabri-Tek. More information about his life can be found in his obituary.

Sir Michael Atiyah passed away on January 11, 2019, at the age of 89. Atiyah, described as "one of the greatest British mathematicians since Isaac Newton," was an honorary professor at University of Edinburgh and a Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He made seminal contributions in geometry, topology, and theoretical physics. Atiyah received the Fields Medal in 1966 for his work in K-theory, particularly the famous Atiyah-Singer theorem. In 2004 he was awarded the Abel Prize jointly with Singer for their statement and proof of the theorem. He also held appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the University of Oxford of the UK. Among his leadership roles, Atiyah was the president of the Royal Society for five years and founding director of the Isaac Newton Institute. To learn more about Atiyah’s life and career, start with his Wikipedia page and this remembrance from the London Mathematical Society. Also, Atiyah is featured on many MAA pages, some which include photographs from his professional life.