In Memoriam: 2017

Garabed (Gary) Gulbenkian passed away in 2017 at the age of 95. Gulbenkian was a member of the MAA for 45 years and worked at General Precision, Inc. in New Jersey. Gulbenkian was one of the contributors to this declassified defense report.

Rudy Horne passed away unexpectedly on December 12, 2017, at the age of 49. He was an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Morehouse College, and he also taught at Florida State University. Horne is best known as the mathematics consultant for the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures, with details about his contributions available from Oklahoma University. For his work on the film, he gave the NAM David Harold Blackwell Lecture at the 2017 MAA MathFest, and he has been described as a “rock star” in the mathematics community. Thoughts of his passing and photographs from his life are available on Twitter and from the University of North Carolina. His obituary was published in the Chicago Sun Times.

Robert Rosenbaum passed away on December 3, 2017, at the age of 102. He was a professor emeritus at Wesleyan University (Connecticut) and a member of the MAA for 60 years. At Wesleyan, Rosenbaum serves as dean, provost, chancellor, and acting president. He also founded PIMMS (Project to Increase Mastery in Mathematics and Science) in 1979. Middletown, CT celebrated two “Robert A. Rosenbaum Days” in 2004 and 2015. More information about his life and career can be found in an oral history and a remembrance, both published by Wesleyan.

Jerry Linnstaedter passed away on November 22, 2017, at the age of 80. He was Professor Emeritus at Arkansas State University and a member of the MAA for 49 years. Linnstaedter earned his PhD from Vanderbilt University, and when he retired in 2007, he was cited for his “outstanding leadership, caring mentorship, and quality teaching”. Further information about his life and career can be found in his obituary.

Adelbert (Del) W. Ransom passed away on November 20, 2017, at the age of 88. He was a professor emeritus at Embry-Riddle University and a member of the MAA for 64 years. Along with his career as a professor, Ransom worked at Patrick Air Force Base and for NASA during the moon exploration era. More information can be found in his obituary.

Herbert Nadler passed away in October 2017 at the age of 85.   He was an actuary in New York during his career, and life member of the MAA.

Jeffrey Remmel died unexpectedly on September 29, 2017, at the age of 68. He was a member of the MAA and a professor at the University of California – San Diego. Remmel’s research focused on combinatorics and he was also deeply involved with the CalTeach Science and Math Teacher Initiative. At UCSD, he served as an Associate Dean of Physical Sciences for 16 years. Substantial information about his life and career can be found in this memorial article from UCSD and his obituary.

Walter A. Rosenkrantz passed away on September 19, 2017, at the age of 79. He was a member of the MAA for 45 years and was Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with research interests in mathematical statistics. His obituary is available online.

Stan Chadick passed away on September 11, 2017, at the age of 76. He was professor emeritus at Northwestern State University (Louisiana) and a member of the MAA for 28 years. He served as the governor of the Louisiana-Mississippi Section and in 2014 received that section’s outstanding service award. Chadick also received the first Distinguished Service Award ever given by the Louisiana Association of Mathematics Teachers. More information about his life and career can be found in his obituary.

Kenneth I. Gross passed away on September 10, 2017, at the age of 78. He was Professor Emeritus at the University of Vermont and a member of the MAA for 47 years. Gross was devoted to enhancing the teaching of mathematics in Vermont. For example, he was the founder of the Vermont Mathematics Initiative, which has had a national impact on mathematics education. For the MAA, Gross was currently serving on the Dolciani Award Committee and received the Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award in 2008 for distinguished teaching. He also received the MAA’s Halmos-Ford Award in 1979 and the Chauvenet Prize in 1981, and he served on several committees such as the AMS-MAA Joint Archives Committee. Further details about his life and career can be found in this remembrance from Penn State University, his Wikipedia page, and his obituary.

Brenda Jean Philips Bloomgarden passed away on September 8, 2017, at the age of 75. She was Professor Emeritus of mathematics at Chesapeake College and a member of the MAA for 34 years. More information about her life and career can be found in her obituary.

Thomas Saaty passed away on August 14, 2017, at the age of 91. He was a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of the MAA for 60 years. Saaty was well known as a pioneer in the field of operations research, spending several years early in his career working for the United States government in a variety of roles such as director of advanced planning in the Office of Naval Research. In the 1960’s, he wrote Mathematical Methods of Arms Control and Disarmament. In 1973, he was awarded the MAA’s Ford-Halmos Award (then the Ford Award) for his article in the Monthly, and he is included in Paul Halmos’ "Who’s That Mathematician" collection. In 2008, he received the INFORMS Impact Prize for his development of the analytic hierarchy process. More information about Saaty’s life and career can be found in a memorial in INFORMS news, as well as tributes from many others.

Cathleen S. Morawetz passed away on August 8, 2017, at the age of 94. She was Professor Emerita at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and a member of the MAA for 45 years. A pioneering woman in mathematics and science, Morawetz made significant contributions in partial differential equations and applied mathematics. For example, she demonstrated the impossibility in the real world of creating aircraft wings that are shock-free. Morawetz was the second woman to serve at the President of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), and she received the MAA’s Lester Ford Award in 1980. She was often honored for her achievements with prestigious awards such as the 2006 Birkhoff Prize and the 2004 Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and she was the first woman invited to give the AMS Gibbs lecture (in 1981). She was also the first female mathematician to receive the National Medal of Science. Extensive information about Morawetz’ life and career can be found in her obituaries in The New York Times and The Washington Post, her page on MacTutor, a remembrance in SIAM News, and a memorial article from New York University.

Raymond Spong passed away on July 30, 2017, at the age of 93. He was a retired mathematical analyst in the research and development department at Electric Boat in Connecticut. Spong was a member of the MAA for 58 years and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. More information about his life and career can be found in his obituary and this article from 2009.

Dmitri Thoro passed away on July 25, 2017, at the age of 97. He was a member of the MAA for a remarkable 69 years. He was also an emeritus faculty member at San Jose State University. Thoro studied combinatorics and Fibonacci numbers. For the MAA, he was an associate editor for the book review section of Mathematics Magazine in the 1960’s. Thoro was known for his many years helping to organize San Jose State’s Math Field Day for high school students.

Maryam Mirzakhani passed away unexpectedly on July 14, 2017, at the age of 40. For her highly-creative work in geometry and dynamical systems, she was the first woman (and first Iranian) to be awarded the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics. Mirzakhani was a professor at Stanford University, and Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne reacted to the news by observing, “Her contributions as both a scholar and a role model are significant and enduring, and she will be dearly missed here at Stanford and around the world." Among the vast collection of articles on Mirzakhani’s life and work are her New York Times obituary, a collection of tributes posted by the AMS, this NPR remembrance, an article from Stanford University, commentary from Terence Tao, and an in-depth piece in The New Yorker by Siobhan Roberts. Many of the articles include further links to videos of Mirzakhani as a teacher and scholar.

Norman W. Johnson passed away on July 13, 2017, at the age of 86. He was Professor Emeritus at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and a member of the MAA for 64 years. Johnson is best known for his enumeration of polyhedra with regular faces in 1966, now known as the Johnson solids. A fund in his honor to promote public understanding of mathematics and computers sciences was established at Wheaton College in 2000. More information about his career can be found on his Wikipedia page and in a remembrance from Joseph Malkevitch.

William T. Sledd passed away on July 6, 2017, at the age of 81. He was Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University and a member of the MAA for 60 years. Sledd was an expert in Karamata matrices and was remembered by his students after his death. His obituary is available online.

William S. Massey passed away on June 17, 2017, at the age of 96. He was emeritus faculty at Yale University and a member of the MAA for 55 years. Massey was an algebraic topologist known for the cohomology operation called the Massey product and for his text A Basic Course in Algebraic Topology. More information about his life and career can be found in a memorial article from Yale and his obituary.

Robert Wiggin passed away on June 2, 2017, at the age of 80. In Massachusetts, he was a mathematics teacher and department chair at Brookline High School, and he also taught at Mesietta High School. Wiggin was a member of the MAA for 21 years. Further information about his life can be found in his obituary.

John D. Oosterhout passed away on May 9, 2017. He was a member of the MAA for 45 years. Oosterhout was an engineer who worked for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The Goddard Retirees & Alumni Association has published a short obituary for Oosterhout. Also available is a photo of him on stage at St. John’s College.

Caren Diefenderfer passed away on March 30, 2017. She was a professor at Hollins College and a very active member of the MAA for 36 years. Diefenderfer was a pioneer in the field of Quantitative Literacy, leading workshops across the country on the subject and co-founding the MAA SIGMAA QL. Among the MAA committees that she served on were the Classroom Resource Materials Editorial Board, the Nominating Committee, and the Council on Outreach Programs. For her outstanding teaching and leadership, in January 2017, she was award the MAA’s Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award. In addition, she co-edited The Calculus Collection: A Resource for AP* and Beyond, published by the MAA, and recently completed just a term as Governor of the MD-DC-VA Section. Extensive information about her life and career can be found in her Haimo Award citation in the JMM17 prize booklet (page 13), a memorial statement from Hollins College, and her obituary.

Arthur Grainger passed away on March 28, 2017, at the age of 74. He was a retired Associate Professor at Morgan State University and a member of the MAA for 43 years. Grainger received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM) in 2014. More information about his life and career can be found in this remembrance in the NAM newsletter.

Eugene and Kathryn B. Toll were strong supporters of the MAA. Eugene passed away on March 6, 2017 at the age of 97, and Kathryn passed away on November 28, 2005 at the age of 78. Eugene Toll was a physicist who also served in the U.S. Navy, while Kathryn was an engineer who worked for General Electric. Kathryn joined the MAA in 1957 and there is a note from her in the AWM newsletter from May-June 1983. Eugene Toll’s obituary is also available.

Kenneth Arrow passed away on February 21, 2017, at the age of 95. In 1972, Arrow won the Nobel Prize in Economics for “pioneering contributions to general equilibrium theory and welfare theory.” The best-known example is Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, proving that under certain reasonable hypotheses it is impossible to devise logically consistent voting rules. Arrow’s work was critical to the mathematizing of the field of economics, and he also published papers in operations research and game theory. Arrow was the Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Among the vast information about his life and career online is his Mathematics Genealogy Project page, the Duke University repository of his papers, and this article from Stanford University.

Logician Raymond Smullyan passed away on February 6, 2017, at the age of 96. Smullyan was Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and Oscar Ewing professor of philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington. Known as the creator of incredibly creative logic-based puzzles, and author of the the 1978 book What Is the Name of This Book?, he was described by the late Martin Gardner as “the most entertaining logician and set theorist who ever lived,” as evidenced by an interview on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He published over thirty books in his areas of interest, well into his 90s, on mathematical logic, philosophy, and puzzles. Extensive information about his life and career can be found in The New York Times and his obituary.

David V. Wend passed away on January 23, 2017, at the age of 93. He was a professor at Montana State University until his retirement in 1991 and a member of the MAA for 65 years. Wend (pictured here) was a specialist in differential equations. More information about his life and career can be found in his obituary.

Ralph Raimi passed away on January 2, 2017, at the age of 92. He was a professor emeritus at the University of Rochester and a member of the MAA for 48 years. Raimi was active in K-12 education reform and was known for his writings on Benford’s Law. More information about his life and career can found in this remembrance from the University of Rochester.