UChicago News

Philip Roth, award-winning author and UChicago alumnus, 1933-2018

Wed, 23 May 2018 15:19 -0500

Philip Roth, one of the iconic voices in American letters who credited his debut novella to a conversation he had while a University of Chicago graduate student, died May 22. He was 85 years old.

Over a career that spanned six decades, Roth, AM’55, received almost every major literary prize, including the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner Award and National Book Critics Circle prize. Other honors included the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal, as well as the Man Booker International Prize for his contributions to literature in English.

Roth received his master’s degree in English from UChicago in 1955 and taught in the College’s writing program from 1956-58.

In media interviews, Roth discussed the impact of his time at UChicago, where he took classes with former Dean of the Humanities Napier Wilt, became a protégé of Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, and studied alongside noted writer and editor Ted Solotaroff.

In a 1983 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Roth said of Chicago: “I’ve never felt as close to any other city I’ve lived in,” in part because of the young talent he met at the University—“the competition, the ambition, the stimulation, the talk.”

Also in that interview Roth said he owed his debut novella Goodbye, Columbus to Richard Stern, the late Helen A. Regenstein Professor Emeritus in English Language and Literature. Over hamburgers at a Hyde Park tavern in 1955, Roth told Stern of his middle-class upbringing in New Jersey. “Dick got a kick out of the stories. ‘Why don’t you write that down?’ he said. My head was so full of The Golden Bowl, I thought he was having me on. But when I went home, I did it.”

His talks with Stern, Roth said, “helped me to see that what was in front of my nose, though not as resounding as Conrad or as convoluted as James, qualified as fiction. That’s what I learned in Hyde Park, how to talk back to all those great books.”

Roth’s time at UChicago influenced his work in other ways as well. Nathan Zuckerman, the protagonist of several Roth novels, is a UChicago alumnus, while Roth described former Dean Wilt as his “greatest supporter.”

“I loved the University of Chicago,” he said in 2011 upon winning the Man Booker International Prize. “[It] was in a great city and had great faculty and it had very, very smart students.” Roth said Bellow’s writing had a deep influence on his work and experience of the city. “[Bellow’s novel] Augie March was my guide book, I read it like Fodor's guide to Chicago, y’know? Also it was so glamorous—it seemed to me, that I should be in this city that nourishes this guy.”

Roth’s debut collection, Goodbye, Columbus won the National Book Award in 1960. He is perhaps best known for his 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint, a comic novel that attracted both praise and controversy for its frank discussion of sexuality. His other novels include The Counterlife, for which he won the 1987 National Book Critics Circle prize for fiction; American Pastoral, for which he won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and Operation Shylock, The Human Stain and Everyman for which he won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1994, 2001 and 2007, respectively.

Robert H. Malott, trustee emeritus, 1926-2018

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 14:00 -0500

Trustee Emeritus Robert H. Malott, former chairman and chief executive officer of FMC Corporation, who served as vice chairman of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees, died April 4. He was 91 years old.

Malott was elected a trustee of the University in 1976. He served as vice chairman of the Board of Trustees from 1988 to 1993, was elected a life trustee in 1993, and was named a trustee emeritus in 2007. Malott joined FMC in 1952 and was elected chief executive in 1971, moving the corporate headquarters to Chicago. He led FMC for two decades, retiring in 1991.

Malott’s civic leadership and philanthropic work ranged from higher education to scientific research to the arts. He served on the governing board of Argonne National Laboratory, which the University manages for the U.S. Department of Energy, and chairman of the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Malott was chairman of the board of the National Museum of Natural History and served on the boards of the Public Broadcasting Service, the National World War II Museum and the National Academy of Sciences. He was a life director of the Lyric Opera Company of Chicago and the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Malott was born in Boston. His father, Deane W. Malott, became chancellor of the University of Kansas where his son enrolled at age 16, studying chemistry and playing basketball. Malott enlisted in the U.S. Navy a year later and served on an electronics repair ship stationed in San Francisco. After World War II, he returned to the University of Kansas to finish his bachelor's degree. He earned an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and attended New York University Law School. Malott served as assistant to the dean at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration before joining FMC.

Malott is survived by his three children, Liza, Barb and Deane. Elizabeth “Ibby” Malott, his wife of 43 years, died in 2003. In keeping with UChicago board tradition, a memorial resolution in honor of Malott will be presented at the board meeting in May.

Moishe Postone, leading interpreter of Marx and scholar of European intellectual history, 1942-2018

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 12:30 -0500

Prof. Moishe Postone, a scholar of 19th- and 20th-century European intellectual history and one of the world’s leading interpreters of Karl Marx, passed away on March 19. He was 75.

Part of the University of Chicago faculty for more than three decades, Postone, SB’63, AM’67, taught generations of undergraduates through the Core sequence on Self, Culture and Society. The Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of History and the College, he was also a faculty member in the Center for Jewish Studies and co-director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory.

Postone was called one of the most important commentators of Marx to come out of the “New Left” generation of the late 1960s. A scholar focused on capitalism, modern anti-Semitism and questions around memory and identity in postwar Germany, his 1993 opus Time, Labor and Social Domination is still widely read, debated and discussed in the field.

“Moishe Postone’s scholarship on Marx’s critique of political economy had a transformational impact on the field of late-20th-century Marxist studies,” said John W. Boyer, dean of the College. “He was an ideal scholar-teacher and critical intellectual in the great Chicago tradition of liberal education, and his impact will long be felt on the intellectual personalities and personal lives of the thousands of students who had the privilege to work with him.”

Postone said his first awakening to the world of social thought came as a UChicago undergraduate, when he was exposed to the works of Marx as a biochemistry student. As a grad student, Postone participated in a 1969 student sit-in at the University’s Administration Building; in its aftermath, he led one of two student study groups seeking to understand the historical moment through social theory. After receiving his PhD from the Goethe-Universität in Germany, Postone returned to Chicago, working with the Center for Transcultural Studies before joining the University of Chicago as an instructor in 1987, where he would remain for the rest of his career.

“As a scholar, teacher, advisor, mentor and colleague, his service to the University and to many disciplines—history, sociology, political science, Jewish studies and Germanic languages and literatures, to name but a few—is a remarkable testament to a career of service to peers and students alike,” said Amanda Woodward, the William S. Gray Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and interim dean of the Division of Social Sciences at UChicago.

Postone’s research revolved around a reinterpretation of Marx and his theories of labor. His work sought to place Marx’s work in context with the great social upheavals of the 20th century, and how the succeeding generations had interpreted it. He was also particularly interested in understanding 20th-century anti-Semitism through the lens of capitalism and its reactionary social movements, such as the rise of national socialism that preceded the Holocaust.

His impact will long be felt on the intellectual personalities and personal lives of the thousands of students who had the privilege to work with him.” Dean John W. Boyer on Prof. Moishe Postone

“Moishe Postone was an internationally recognized historian and practitioner of critical theory; his reinterpretations of Marx’s thinking—both in his published work and in his graduate colloquia—were insightful and influential,” said Prof. Emilio Kourí, who chairs UChicago’s Department of History. “A gifted teacher, he trained generations of scholars in European intellectual history.”

For more nearly three decades, Postone also chaired the Core sequence on Self, Culture and Society—one of the four general education social science tracks that undergraduates are required to take at the University of Chicago. “His leadership of that course played a very influential role in the modern history of the College,” Boyer said. “Moishe was a remarkable, charismatic teacher who believed deeply in the fundamental importance of Chicago’s traditions of general education.”

In 1999 he won a Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. “I do not want students writing papers just for me, their teacher, but to take responsibility for communicating what they think,” he told the University of Chicago Chronicle at the time.

He continued to teach, write and organize as he battled cancer; in 2016, Postone delivered the Vienna Prize Lecture at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna, and delivered a keynote address on right-wing populism at the Vienna Humanities Festival this past autumn.

A University memorial service is being planned for the spring.

Peter Freund, particle physicist and fiction writer, 1936-2018

Tue, 13 Mar 2018 10:11 -0500

“Physicists do not live in an ivory tower; they are not spared the ravages of history,” wrote Prof. Peter Freund upon his retirement at the University of Chicago in 2002, following a half-century career in supersymmetry and string theory.

Freund knew. Born into a Romanian Jewish family during a tumultuous era in Europe, he narrowly avoided the Holocaust and later a Communist firing squad before escaping the country. He eventually became a professor at the University of Chicago, studying particle physics. But even as he picked at the fabric holding the universe together, he was thinking about art, beauty and the forces of history.

Freund, who later wrote fiction and nonfiction that explored the themes of morality, fate, beauty, war and oppression that had impacted his life, died March 6. He was 81.

Freund was born in 1936 in Timișoara, Romania to a wealthy Jewish family; his mother was an opera singer, his father a doctor. Even as other Jews were executed or sent to concentration camps during World War II, their community survived by bribing officials. But the Soviet rule that followed proved dangerous too. In 1956, Freund joined a demonstration that ended with him and other students lined up against a wall with Communist tanks pointed at them. Somehow the order to fire never came, and the students escaped.

Shortly after, the family fled to Austria, and Freund got his PhD in physics at the University of Vienna. In 1965, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he would remain for the rest of his career.

His wide-ranging work in theoretical physics had a strong mathematical flavor. “He was frequently an early contributor in fields and theories that later rose to prominence,” said Jeff Harvey, the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Service Professor of Physics. “He had good taste.”

These included supersymmetry and string theory, including a branch that tied string theory with a mathematical concept called p-adic numbers, as well as a concept called AdS/CFT correspondence, which relates quantum models of particles with quantum models of gravity.

“Peter had an appreciation for beauty and elegance that guided him as much in theoretical physics as it did in the arts,” said Prof. Emil Martinec, who heads UChicago’s Kadanoff Center for Theoretical Physics and was assigned the office next to Freund’s when he first arrived at the University in 1987. “In the search for organizing principles of particle physics, this good taste is extremely helpful.”

Freund wrote two well-regarded physics texts, Introduction to Supersymmetry (1986) and Superstrings (1988), and was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society.

He had long been regarded as the departmental storyteller, and he had been writing his own stories for three decades before he began publishing them in 2007. His first book was a work collecting stories about the famous physicists of the 20th century called A Passion for Discovery; his fiction includes Tales in a Minor Key, West of West End and Belonging.

He told UChicago News in 2008 that he saw many parallels between science and literature: most papers in physics are short stories, in which concepts, rather than human characters, undergo adventures. “In the end, they emerge changed, occasionally with new concepts being introduced and promises that we will return to them, which is like what they call a sequel or a spinoff in Hollywood.”

His fiction was just another medium, friends said; his musical tastes ran from opera to Metallica, and he occasionally sang as a baritone for the Evanston-based Light Opera Works.

He is survived by his wife Lucy, two daughters and five grandchildren. A memorial service at the University is planned for the spring.

John T. Cacioppo, pioneer and founder of the field of social neuroscience, 1951-2018

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 10:17 -0600

Prof. John T. Cacioppo, a pioneer and founder of the field of social neuroscience whose research on loneliness helped to transform psychology and neuroscience, died unexpectedly and peacefully at home on March 5. He was 66.

Cacioppo was the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and served as director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and chair of the Social Psychology Program. He is survived by his beloved wife, Stephanie, director of the brain dynamics laboratory at the University; and two children, Anthony and Christina.

“John’s passing is a profound loss for the field, the University, and the many, many colleagues, students and friends who knew him and learned from his myriad of contributions,” said Amanda Woodward, the William S. Gray Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and interim dean of the Division of Social Sciences. “His influence across psychology, social neuroscience and health science was enormous, not only as a scientist but as an advocate for science. His legacy cannot be overstated.”

Cacioppo’s colleagues and family said he will be remembered as a truth seeker, creative genius, brilliant scientist, innovator, colleague, teacher, mentor, leader, father and husband.

“There are so few people of whom we can truly say, ‘He was one of a kind,’ but of John it was painfully, obviously true,” said Daniel Gilbert, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

“His influence across psychology, social neuroscience and health science was enormous, not only as a scientist but as an advocate for science.”Prof. Amanda Woodward

Social neuroscience as a distinct field of study was first coined by Cacioppo and colleagues at Ohio State University in 1992. The interdisciplinary field that Cacioppo developed focused on human and animal investigations of the multi-level interactions between neural, hormonal, cellular, and genetic/genomic mechanisms underlying social structures and processes. While most research in neuroscience focused on the individual, the new discipline examined the associations between social and neural development and evolution from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

“John's work embodied everything we strive for: tackling the most important questions with all the tools available, no matter how big the challenge,” said former colleague Ralph Adolphs, the Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Biology at the California Institute of Technology.

‘Visionary research’

Born June 12, 1951 in Marshall, Texas, Cacioppo received his PhD in psychology from the Ohio State University in 1977. He began his career at the University of Notre Dame before returning to Ohio State in 1989. He joined the University of Chicago’s faculty in 1999.

“John Cacioppo conducted visionary research that made groundbreaking contributions to psychology and other fields in the social and biological sciences,” said Susan Levine, the Rebecca Anne Boylan Professor in Education and Society and chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. “As a colleague, he played a leading role in our graduate program in Social Psychology and was a dedicated undergraduate teacher regularly teaching Fundamentals of Psychology, which introduces many students to the field. He will be greatly missed.”

Cacioppo began his research by exploring what happens to the brain when social connections are absent. For two decades he studied social fitness, resilience and the effects of loneliness, showing the negative impacts social isolation has not only on mental health but physical health.

“The purpose of loneliness is like the purpose of hunger,” Cacioppo said in a 2017 interview with The Atlantic. “Hunger takes care of your physical body. Loneliness takes care of your social body, which you also need to survive and prosper. We’re a social species.”

In a 2016 interview with the Guardian, he had emphasized that human beings thrive best when not only receiving, but also giving, affection: “One of the things that we have learned is that avoiding loneliness is not about ‘getting,’ not about being a recipient. Despite what economists say, that is not how we are designed. We need mutual aid and protection.”

John and Stephanie Cacioppo (Photo by Joe Sterbenc)

Cacioppo met his wife, Asst. Prof. Stephanie Cacioppo, at a scientific conference in Shanghai, and they married in 2011. Friends and colleagues said the two set an inspiring example of true love and how to love deeply in a marriage.

Stephanie Cacioppo’s academic specialty is love and its benefits. She joined the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, and the two shared an office and a desk, maintaining a partnership in life and in research. Their romance was featured in a recent “Modern Love” column in The New York Times, which emphasized Stephanie Cacioppo’s research finding that love brings with it physical and mental benefits, such as thinking better and healing faster. She called their marriage “the perfect meeting of the study of loneliness with the study of love.”

Stephanie Cacioppo said she is devastated by her husband’s passing and described their seven years of marriage as “the best years of my life.” She said she will be forever bonded to him by love, truth and science.

“My husband was my everything. He was the smartest and the kindest person I have ever met. He was, he is and he will remain the love of my life; my intellectual hero, my inspiration, and my role model in life and science,” Stephanie Cacioppo said. “His legacy will live on through his seminal work, our forever lasting love and through all of us whose minds had the privilege of his influence.”

‘Impossible to replace’

Over a celebrated career, John Cacioppo made several breakthroughs and authored more than 500 articles and books, including Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connections (2008).

“John Cacioppo has been more influential on my thinking than anyone else. He will be truly impossible to replace,” said Jay Van Bavel, associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University.

Cacioppo was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, served on numerous advisory panels, including the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science as an appointee by President Obama, and was elected as a fellow to 19 scientific societies. He also served as the president of several societies and was the founding faculty director of the Brain Academy and the Arete Initiative of the Office of the Vice President for Research and National Laboratories at the University of Chicago, a program that helped to promote the careers of faculty by advancing their ideas with funding agencies.

“This is a terrible loss for all of us,” said Eric Isaacs, UChicago's executive vice president for research, innovation and national laboratories. “John was a wonderful and caring person and an incredible leader in science and scholarship. There are very few who have had such a significant influence by helping to create a new field of study. Social neuroscience continues to be of growing importance to science and society. John leaves a remarkable legacy.”

“His legacy will live on through his seminal work, our forever lasting love and through all of us whose minds had the privilege of his influence.”Stephanie Cacioppo

Cacioppo’s innovative lines of inquiry and his substantive findings received wide recognition, including the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology (2015), the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (2016), and the Career Achievement Award from the Chicago Society for Neuroscience (2016).

“Put simply, John is one of those once-in-a-generation psychologists whose impact is felt broadly and deeply within the field. He is a creative genius whose cumulative accomplishments are so inseparable from the field that it is hard to imagine contemporary psychology without him,” said longtime collaborator Richard E. Petty, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Psychology at Ohio State University.

In 2017, Cacioppo was honored with the Phoenix Prize, the Division of the Social Sciences’ highest honor, for his exceptional work which shaped the direction of research and inquiry around the world. Cacioppo was only the fifth faculty member to receive the prize, which was established in 1994.

In May, Cacioppo was to receive the prestigious William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Sciences for a lifetime of “significant intellectual contributions to the basic science of psychology.”

As director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, Cacioppo led investigations to better understand the functions of the brain and nervous system and their implications for human cognition, behavior, health and societies.

A University memorial service will be held at 6 p.m. March 28 at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. In lieu of flowers, please consider a gift to a fund supporting Prof. Cacioppo’s work and legacy. For more information, contact Blake Davis at (773) 702-7175 or blake2@uchicago.edu.

Steven Collins, world-renowned scholar of Buddhism, 1951-2018

Thu, 01 Mar 2018 11:52 -0600

Prof. Steven Collins, a world-renowned scholar of Buddhism and its associated Pali language, passed away from natural causes Feb. 15, while leading a seminar in New Zealand. He was 66.

The Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities, Collins chaired the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations several times since joining the UChicago faculty in 1991. He was also associate faculty in the Divinity School.

Whitney Cox, associate professor and chair of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, said Collins was one of his generation’s most distinguished historians of premodern Southern Asia.

“He was perhaps the single most sheerly intelligent person I’ve ever known, a great citizen of the University, and a wise and compassionate teacher and friend,” Cox said. He described Collins as a “doting husband, father and grandfather, an obsessive Miles Davis and John Coltrane fan, and a lifelong supporter of Tottenham Hotspur F.C. soccer.”

Collins was the author of several books on Buddhist studies. His thesis became the basis for his first book, Selfless Persons. He later examined the makings of Buddhist civilization—an idea he explored in Nirvana: Concept, Imagery, Narrative. Most recently he was writing about civilization, wisdom and practices of the self.

Daniel Arnold, associate professor of the philosophy of religions in UChicago’s Divinity School, said he had a “transformative encounter” with Collins’ Selfless Persons as a graduate student. He later became Collins’ colleague and counted him a friend.

“I will miss many things after his tragically untimely passing,” Arnold said. “May all who of us who learned from his exemplary intellectual engagement strive to continue bringing something of this lost clarity of thought to a world badly in need of it.”

Collins is survived by his wife, Claude Grangier, senior lecturer in Romance Languages and Literatures at UChicago; as well as three children and three grandchildren.

Jack Halpern, ‘towering intellect’ in field of inorganic chemistry, 1925-2018

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 10:05 -0600

Prof. Emeritus Jack Halpern, widely recognized for his pioneering and influential contributions to the field of inorganic chemistry, died Jan. 31. He was 93.

The Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Halpern made seminal contributions to the field, particularly his research on catalysts—the magic agents that speed up chemical reactions. He helped usher in the flowering of catalysis chemistry in the latter half of the 20th century, crucial for manufacturing everything from pharmaceuticals to adhesives. His work to decode the mechanics of chemical reactions underlies many modern chemical manufacturing processes.

“He was a towering intellect,” said Prof. Viresh Rawal, who chairs the University’s Department of Chemistry. “Many chemical reaction pathways are highly complex, involving one or more transient intermediates on the way to the final products. Jack, with his very deep understanding of kinetics and reaction mechanisms, carried out careful experiments to unravel those pathways.”

Born in Poland in 1925, Halpern moved to Canada with his family at a young age, where he received his BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry from McGill University in Montreal. After stints in Manchester and Vancouver, in 1962 he joined the faculty at UChicago, where he would remain for the rest of his career.

Halpern’s work focused on understanding the fundamental chemistry of transition metals—the compounds they form and the reactions they undergo. By fully understanding these processes, researchers can tinker with the reactions to yield the exact form of the compound that they wish to produce. For example, when pharmaceutical companies make drugs, they often need the molecule to come out with the right chirality (a right- or left-flipped mirror version of the molecule) or else the drug won’t be effective.

“Jack was the preeminent mechanistic inorganic chemist of the 20th century—a real pioneer,” said Richard Jordan, the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry. “He was an unbelievably rigorous scientist, known for studying his systems in great detail and providing very strong evidence for his conclusions. He also had incredible command of the field; whenever you went to ask him about some new research, he would refer you to some experiment done in 1978 that gave you a broader perspective on your work.”

“When I think of the University of Chicago, Jack is the type of scholar who I think of as emblematic.”Prof. Chuan He

Within the department, chemistry faculty sometimes refer to the “Halpern theorem”: that just because a chemist can isolate a chemical intermediate thought to be part of the reaction pathway, it does not mean that it is a primary actor in the reaction. “Jack demonstrated this principle through his work, and it is now widely accepted,” Rawal said.

Another contribution was his quantitative measurements of bond energies—laying out the relationships between bonds of various types in chemical reactions, and thus how likely they are to form under various circumstances. For example, he studied the bonds that form during reactions with vitamin B12, which teased out how the vitamin works.

“When I think of the University of Chicago, Jack is the type of scholar who I think of as emblematic,” said Chuan He, the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, who once shared an office suite with Halpern. “He was a pure scholar; not flashy, just a deep understanding and knowledge of the field. Whenever someone came to give a seminar in our department, after they finished giving their talk, Jack’s hand would go up and the speaker would get visibly nervous, knowing a very thoughtful and difficult question was coming their way.”

Halpern worked extensively as an editor of scientific journals, first with the Journal of the American Chemical Society and then for the National Academy of Sciences, where he served as vice president from 1993 to 2001 and as an associate editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for many years.

His honors include the Willard Gibbs Medal of the American Chemical Society, the Paracelsus Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society and the Robert A. Welch Award in Chemistry. He was a member of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Canada, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and National Academy of Sciences, among others. He also consulted for Monsanto and worked with Argonne National Laboratory.

His children said that his passion for chemistry was matched by his and his late wife Helen’s passion for the arts; he served on the board of directors of the University of Chicago’s Court Theatre and Smart Museum of Art for many years. The pair collected 20th-century art, particularly cubism, expressionism and surrealism.

Halpern is survived by daughters, Janice and Nina; grandchildren, Jared Henry and Claire Henry; great grandchild, Andrew Henry; brother, Norman; and many nieces and nephews. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Court Theatre, the Smart Museum of Art or Doctors Without Borders.

Robert McCormick Adams, anthropologist, former provost and Oriental Institute director, 1926-2018

Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:10 -0600

By 1950, University of Chicago student Robert McCormick Adams had already been a steel mill worker, a physics student and a Navy radio technician, and thought he wanted to be a journalist. Then one day his professor, renowned anthropologist Robert Braidwood, had a sudden opening on an archaeological dig in the foothills of Iraq that would change Adams’ life.

Adams, PhB’47, AM’52, PhD’56, was picked because he knew how to work on cars, but the chance trip would lead to decades of digs in Iraq, Mexico, Iran and Saudi Arabia. It opened a wide-ranging career at the University of Chicago, where he spent nearly three decades and served as director of the Oriental Institute and provost of the University before leaving to direct the Smithsonian Institution.

The Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Adams died Jan. 27 at age 91. Colleagues remember the prolific scholar as one of the most influential figures in the archaeology of ancient complex societies, who fundamentally transformed theories about the origins of urbanism before leaving to shape museums in the nation’s capital.

“Bob was a towering figure of Near Eastern archaeology and a pioneer of innovative methods of landscape archaeology,” said Christopher Woods, director of the Oriental Institute. “He was fundamentally interested in the reciprocal interaction between humans and their environments—how civilization and geography are inextricably intertwined.”

Adams’ scholarship focused on the relationships between societies and their environment, with particular interest in social evolutionary theory and how innovation is connected to societal structure. He was an early pioneer of the technique of using aerial photography and satellite images, which he combined with historical and ethnographic data to investigate settlement patterns, irrigation structures and early urbanism. Later in his career Adams was renowned for his lucid observations about the responsibilities of archaeologists—and science itself.

Adams later served as director of the Oriental Institute from 1962-68 and 1981-83. He was dean of the Division of the Social Sciences from 1970-74 before being appointed provost of the University in 1982.

“As a student, a scholar and an administrator, Professor Adams made contributions to the University of Chicago throughout his life,” said Amanda Woodward, interim dean of the Division of the Social Sciences and the William S. Gray Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology. “His many achievements are a testament to his dedication to this institution, and his leadership not only influenced the Division of the Social Sciences and the Oriental Institute but also enriched the reach of the social sciences to people across the nation.”

During his decade-long tenure at the Smithsonian, Adams oversaw the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of African Art and the National Postal Museum. He also headed renovations to aging infrastructure, encouraged digitization of its research, made a point to involve indigenous communities in museum planning, and oversaw a shift to spotlight darker or more controversial points of American history and science, such as an Enola Gay exhibit in the National Air and Space Museum.

His numerous books include The Evolution of Urban Society, Paths of Fire, Heartland of Cities and The Land Behind Baghdad. After his retirement in 1994, he continued his research as an adjunct professor at the University of California in San Diego.

In an American Antiquity article reviewing Adams’ work, Norman Yoffee wrote, “Few archaeologists have had the power to influence the course of their times as has Adams, nor to have done it so well.”

His honors include the distinguished service award from the Society of American Archaeology and the UChicago Alumni Association’s Alumni Medal, bestowed for achievement of an exceptional nature.

At the University he met and married Ruth Salzman Adams, who became the editor of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. She died in 2005.

Robert J. LaLonde, pioneering scholar, beloved colleague and mentor, 1958-2018

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 10:11 -0600

Robert J. LaLonde, AB’80, was a passionate scholar whose pioneering methods continue to impact public policy and economics. But colleagues will remember the professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy as a beloved friend and mentor whose dedication and enthusiasm inspired faculty, students and alumni.

LaLonde, who died Jan. 17 at age 59 following a long illness, was a leading scholar in the fields of labor economics, econometrics and program evaluation, and made important contributions to research on workplace issues, education and the economic effects of immigration. A UChicago faculty member for three decades, LaLonde is perhaps best known as director of the PhD program at Harris Public Policy, serving on 21 dissertation committees at Harris, as well as committees for the Department of Economics and the Booth School of Business.

“Bob left an indelible mark on this institution and the lives of so many people over the decades he spent at the University. Today, we grieve a beloved colleague, mentor, teacher and adviser,” wrote Dean Katherine Baicker in a note to the Harris community.

LaLonde’s research spanned topics of program evaluation, education and training of the workforce, economic effects of immigration in the United States, costs of worker displacement, impact of unions and collective bargaining in the United States, and economic and social consequences of incarceration.

“Bob’s work changed the way we all approach research and how we understand the world. But more than that, he was the type of decent and kind person that parents want their kids to be when they grow up,” said Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics, the College and Harris.

Deeply concerned about issues of inequality in America, LaLonde studied job training programs targeted toward the disadvantaged, the plight of women in Illinois prisons and their children, and the employment prospects of young men after they are paroled from prison.

“Bob was an integral part of the labor economics community at the University of Chicago. His work on the earnings losses of displaced workers has been hugely influential to both academics and policymakers,” said Erik Hurst, the V. Duane Rath Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth.

Hurst called LaLonde, whom he got to know on the Little League fields on the South Side, “an integral member of the Hyde Park community.” LaLonde’s commitment to community issues was reflected in his service on the board of Public/Private Ventures, a national nonprofit organization working to improve the effectiveness of social policies, programs and community initiatives.

“Bob LaLonde was my colleague, coauthor and loyal friend for over 30 years,” said Robert Topel, the Sidore Brown and Gladys J. Brown Distinguished Service Professor at Chicago Booth. “He was an outstanding economist, with a number of important contributions, but an even better husband and father. His service to the University, which became a struggle in later years, was unsurpassed.”

The far-reaching influence of LaLonde’s work has been chronicled by academic journals, most recently through a series of essays published in his honor by the Journal of Labor Economics. To honor his contributions to economics, a conference was held two years ago at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. LaLonde served as a fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Institute for the Study of Labor, as well as a senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers from 1987-1988.

LaLonde is survived by his wife, Laura Skosey, a lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at UChicago; and their children, Elena Skosey-LaLonde, Eve Skosey-LaLonde and Julian Skosey-LaLonde; his father Robert T. LaLonde; his siblings and their familes: Judith LaLonde and Peter Bodine and children Adam, Daniel and Benjamin Bodine; Mary LaLonde and Dan Nourie and children Luke and Colette Nourie; Jane LaLonde and Steve Bottega; Suzanne LaLonde and Joe Romano and children Marc and Marie Romano; Jerome LaLonde and Melissa Young; Tom LaLonde and Julie Zito and children Kathryn and Alex LaLonde. He is also survived by his mother- and father-in-law, Connie and John Skosey, and brothers in-law and their families Lyle and Louise Skosey, Peter Skosey and Mellody Bose Skosey and children Nikki and Erik Bose, and Bryn Skosey. LaLonde was predeceased by his mother Suzanne D. LaLonde.

A spring service on campus is being planned. The family asks that anyone wishing to make donations in LaLonde’s honor to please consider CurePSP or UChicago’s College Fund.

Milton J. Rosenberg, professor of psychology and Chicago radio host, 1925-2018

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 15:35 -0600

Prof. Emeritus Milton J. Rosenberg, a longtime scholar at the University of Chicago and revered radio show host, died Jan. 9. He was 92.

Rosenberg studied social psychology, authored books on Vietnam and U.S. foreign relations, reviewed books for the Chicago Tribune, and taught four decades of students at UChicago.

His largest audience was the millions of listeners who tuned into his daily interview radio show Extension 720 on WGN, in which he hosted guests from Carl Sagan to Julia Child, Jimmy Carter to Gloria Steinem and discussed topics from baseball to world religions to Watergate. The show ran for nearly 40 years and garnered him admirers around the country for its intellectual and engaging tone; radio personality Ed Schwartz called him “the best wordsmith on the Chicago radio dial.”

“He had on the most interesting authors and public intellectuals, actually listened to what they said, engaged them seriously, and never, ever talked down to his audience,” said Charles Lipson, the Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus in Political Science and the College at the University. “His station was not a rarefied, specialized one; it was the biggest in Chicago. He assumed his listeners wanted to be pushed intellectually, whether they had PhDs or GEDs.”

“[He could] leap from ward politics to nuclear warhead throw-weights to Etruscan philosophy in a single bound, and then do a commercial for Vienna Red Hots.”Chicago Tribune journalist Michael Kilian

As a researcher, Rosenberg focused on the causes and consequences of social interaction, particularly attitude acquisition and attitude change. His work investigated influencing factors such as rhetoric or propaganda and hidden dynamics of public opinion, including whether people are honest to interviewers, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities, which awarded Rosenberg the National Humanities Medal in 2008.

Rosenberg authored multiple books, including Beyond Conflict and Containment and Attitude Organization and Change. He was best known for Vietnam and the Silent Majority: The Dove’s Guide in which he and his co-authors looked to develop an alternative form of public protest.

Born in New York City in 1925, Rosenberg attended Brooklyn College and received degrees at University of Wisconsin and University of Michigan. He taught at Yale, Ohio State and Dartmouth before joining the University of Chicago in 1965, where he remained until his retirement in 1996.

WGN selected Rosenberg to host a new talk show in 1973; the program ran for four decades and was broadcast in 38 states. His path to radio host started with Rosenberg moderating recorded conversations between UChicago faculty members and visitors to campus, including one between Nobel laureates Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Tapes of such conversations were shared with radio stations across the country. Rosenberg was a frequent guest on Extension 720 before becoming the host, saying he thought he’d just host the show for a year or two and buy a new car, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He was a skilled interviewer able to deftly draw guests into lively discussion, demonstrating an impressive command of subjects across the political and academic spectrum. His longtime friend Joseph A. Morris, AB’73, JD’76, described the show as a series of “extraordinary conversations … held for the benefit of millions of Americans listening to his program each night in their homes and cars across the nation.”

Musing on the show, Chicago Tribune journalist Michael Kilian called Rosenberg “excruciatingly erudite yet engaging”—able to “leap from ward politics to nuclear warhead throw-weights to Etruscan philosophy in a single bound, and then do a commercial for Vienna Red Hots.”

When Rosenberg was awarded the National Humanities Medal, the citation proclaimed: “Combining a scholar’s understanding and a teacher’s openness, he has made a home in radio for elevated conversation and profound thought.” Even after the show officially ended in 2012, he continued to broadcast on other shows and podcasts.

He received multiple broadcasting honors, including a star on WGN’s Walk of Fame outside of Tribune Tower.

He is survived by his wife, Marjorie Rosenberg; son Matthew; two grandchildren, Max and Ava; and his brother, Norman, a distinguished climatologist. Rosenberg is also survived, Morris notes, by “thousands of students and millions of listeners who will no longer hear his voice probing the far reaches of the cosmos, the fine details of history and literature, and the depths of the human mind.”

Robert N. Clayton, ‘one of the giants’ of cosmochemistry, 1930-2017

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 13:41 -0600

Prof. Emeritus Robert N. Clayton, whose pioneering research on the chemistry of meteorites and lunar rocks helped shape the field of cosmochemistry, died on Dec. 30. He was 87.

In the foreword of a book dedicated to Clayton, Smithsonian geologist Glenn MacPherson wrote that Clayton “could easily wear the name ‘Mr. Oxygen.’” Clayton pioneered the use of oxygen isotopes as “fingerprints,” creating a relatively simple test to distinguish meteorites from ordinary rocks as well as a revolution in the burgeoning field of cosmochemistry.

Clayton, the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Chemistry, Geophysical Sciences and the Enrico Fermi Institute, joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1958. Early in his career, he studied lunar rocks retrieved by the Apollo missions. His breakthrough came when he tested meteorites for the isotope oxygen-17 in addition to the usually studied oxygen-16 and oxygen-18. To the surprise of everyone in the field, he found that the ratio of these isotopes was extremely unusual, very different from Earth rocks.

The finding offered a scientific mystery that is yet to be fully solved—and a straightforward test to identify meteorites. “It was a profound discovery,” said Prof. Andrew Davis, who chairs the Department of Geophysical Sciences at UChicago and first worked with Clayton as a postdoctoral scholar in the late 1970s, “and it paved the way for a whole new line of inquiry.”

Clayton’s results, published in a seminal 1973 paper, energized the emerging field of cosmochemistry, which uses chemistry as a way to learn not only about meteorite age, source and history but how the planets and bodies formed in the early solar system. Analyzing the isotopes in rock samples reveals information about the conditions under which that rock formed, and the oxygen-17 measurements showed that the meteorites formed by a very unusual chemical process or circumstance. What exactly those circumstances were, and their ramifications for our picture of the early solar system, are still hotly debated.

Along with his longtime research associate, chemist Toshiko Mayeda, Clayton became the go-to source for meteorite analysis. “You’ll find his name on many, many papers describing new meteorites,” said Lawrence Grossman, UChicago professor emeritus in the Department of Geophysical Sciences, who co-authored the 1973 paper with Clayton. “He was really one of the giants of the field of cosmochemistry.”

Though Clayton and Mayeda created a number of tests and techniques widely used in the field, Clayton always performed the oxygen analysis with a ruler, pocket calculator and a 1950s-era vacuum-tube mass spectrometer, now on display in the Henry Hinds Laboratory for Geophysical Sciences. For a quarter of a century, oxygen from virtually every new type of meteorite passed through that spectrometer as Clayton and Mayeda mapped out the isotope ratios for every class of meteorites.

Clayton was also a pioneer in the field of stable isotope geothermometry, which is used in everything from reconstructing temperature changes over millennia as a stalactite forms to reconstructing the climate history of the Earth from polar ice cores. Clayton was a pioneer and major contributor to this field; “Bob’s work to measure the distribution of oxygen isotopes between coexisting minerals was a major step in transforming stable isotope geothermometry into a quantitative science,” Davis said.

His colleagues remembered Clayton as an unusually dedicated teacher, always impeccably dressed in a white shirt and tie, with a gift for making complex concepts sound simple and a passion for the fundamentals of chemistry. “He was a great scientist, but one of the underpinnings of his greatness was that he really, truly understood the fundamentals. That’s why he liked to teach first-year chemistry: Those undergrads will ask you questions you haven’t considered in 35 years,” Grossman said.

His daily coffee breaks were a mainstay in the department for decades, drawing noted visitors and regular attendees for their intense scientific and non-scientific discussions. He served as chair of the Department of Geophysical Sciences from 1976-79, as director of the Enrico Fermi Institute from 1998-2001, and as master of the Division of the Physical Sciences' Collegiate Division and associate dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences from 1969-72.

Even in official retirement, he continued to conduct research, meet with students and challenge the field: In 2002, he published a half-page statement in Nature, publically changing his mind on a longstanding argument about whether variability in oxygen isotopes was a result of early star formation or exposure to ultraviolet light. The paper predicted the sun would be five percent richer in oxygen-16 than the rest of the solar system—a finding that was confirmed by the Genesis spacecraft years later.

Clayton was awarded the National Medal of Science, as well as the Geochemical Society’s Goldschmidt Medal, the Urey Medal of the European Association of Geochemistry, and the Meteoritical Society’s Leonard Medal, among others. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Clayton is survived by his wife Cathy, daughter Elizabeth and granddaughter Leonora.

Jonathan Z. Smith, celebrated historian of religion, 1938-2017

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 15:08 -0600

Prof. Emeritus Jonathan Z. Smith, an influential historian of religion and a celebrated faculty member at the University of Chicago, passed away Dec. 30. He was 79.

A member of the UChicago faculty for 45 years, Smith joined the Divinity School as an assistant professor in 1968. He became a professor in 1975, was named the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professorship in the Humanities in 1982 and retired in 2013. He also served as master of the Humanities Collegiate Division from 1974 to 1977 and as dean of the College from 1977 to 1982.

Colleagues remembered him as a brilliant teacher, mentor, scholar and colleague who was passionate about the University of Chicago community and his field of study.

“Jonathan Z. Smith was a quintessential Chicago scholar of indomitable intellectual energy and unforgettable wit, iconoclastic in the very best sense, and utterly dedicated to a life of learning and teaching—for himself, his students and for a civil society,” said Margaret M. Mitchell, the Shailer Mathews Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and former dean of the Divinity School.

“Generations of undergraduates knew Jonathan Z. Smith as a challenging, inspiring, uncompromising, witty and breathtakingly erudite teacher,” said Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School. “The wider world of religious studies knew him as the author of paradigms and theoretical formulations that changed the way we now study religion.”

An early fascination with the relationship between myth and philosophy led Smith to an academic career examining the nature and history of religions across cultures—from Maori cults in the 19th century to the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.

“They’re interesting, in and of themselves,” Smith said in a 2008 interview with the Chicago Maroon, describing the religions he chose to study. “They relate to the world in which I live, but it’s like a funhouse mirror: Something’s off. It’s not quite the world I live in, yet it’s recognizable. So that gap interested me. And so I specialized in religions that are dead, which has the great advantage that nobody talks back.”

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Smith became interested in religion at a young age when he decided to abstain from eating meat and found defense for his choice through religious texts. As an undergraduate he was fascinated with the relationship between Greek philosophy and myth and was encouraged by a philosophy professor to attend Yale Divinity School, where he earned a PhD in 1969.

Smith devoted his career to rigorous methodological research and drawing new understandings from disparate sources. For his scholarly work, Smith received numerous recognitions, including membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was the past president of the Society for Biblical Literature and the North American Association for the Study of Religion. In 2013 he earned an honorary lifetime membership in the International Association for the History of Religions.

Smith was also a beloved teacher, and he received the University’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1986. Bruce Lincoln, the Caroline E. Haskell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, recalled Smith’s brilliance in the classroom.

“As a lecturer, he was absolutely spellbinding,” said Lincoln, one of Smith’s former graduate students. “In exchanges with students he was wonderfully encouraging, challenging and inspiring.”

Smith is survived by his wife, Elaine B. Smith; children, Siobhan Smith and Jason Smith (Rachel Weaver); granddaughter, Hazel van Wijk; and sister, Pamela Hanson. There will be no funeral or memorial services.

Brian Baldea, associate director of athletics and longtime baseball coach, 1955-2017

Fri, 08 Dec 2017 14:00 -0600

Brian Baldea, University of Chicago associate director of athletics and former head baseball coach, passed away Dec. 5 at the age of 62.

Baldea was in his 28th year serving within UChicago Athletics & Recreation. He spent 24 seasons leading the Maroons baseball team from 1991 through 2014.

At the helm of the Maroons, Baldea became the winningest baseball coach in the program’s 125-year history. His career record stands at 411-377-5. On April 28, 2007, he surpassed Amos Alonzo Stagg as the school’s all-time leader in baseball victories with 281. Baldea's teams compiled 14 winning seasons and nine campaigns with at least 20 wins.

UChicago’s greatest baseball success occurred under Baldea’s leadership. From 1996-98, the Maroons compiled three-straight 20-win seasons—a feat never before accomplished during the program’s previous 105 years of competition. His 2001 squad set a new school record for victories with a 26-8 mark. Over his final five years as a coach, the Maroons racked up 15 All-Region selections. Alumnus Mark Mosier was named to the all-America and academic all-America teams in 1997, and was selected by the San Francisco Giants in the Major League Baseball draft.

In his role as associate athletic director, Baldea worked alongside Athletic Director Erin McDermott on strategic initiatives. Baldea oversaw the fitness and wellness programs and personnel, including the FitChicago program, personal training, and strength and conditioning, as well as the sports information and promotions office. Additionally, he helped coordinate enrichment programming for student-athletes and managed athletic facilities rentals.

A Chicago native, Baldea attended Amos Alonzo Stagg High School in suburban Palos Hills. He earned his bachelor’s degree from North Park University in 1976, and his master’s degree from the University of Illinois in 1978.

Before his arrival on the Hyde Park campus, Baldea was an assistant baseball coach at Illinois State University for seven years. While at ISU, he spent five years as head coach of a franchise in a summer collegiate league sanctioned by the NCAA and financed by Major League Baseball for the purpose of developing and showcasing college players who exhibit professional potential. Baldea's clubs won four consecutive league championships, and he recruited and coached approximately 40 players who went on to sign professional contracts.

Visitation is scheduled for Dec. 9 from 4 to 9 p.m. at Thompson & Kuenster Funeral Home, 5570 W. 95th St. in suburban Oak Lawn.

—This story first appeared on the Athletics & Recreation website.

Eminent bioengineering scholar to lead UChicago’s Center for Physics of Evolving Systems

Thu, 07 Dec 2017 14:15 -0600

The University of Chicago is launching the Center for Physics of Evolving Systems to study the secrets behind the extraordinary efficiency, flexibility and robustness of biological systems designed via evolution.

The new center will span the Division of the Biological Sciences and the Institute for Molecular Engineering, bringing together faculty across biology, physics and engineering, and potentially the humanities.

Nature is full of systems that boggle the minds of engineers. Built by evolution, these systems—like the proteins in our cells—are constantly performing very precise and complex tasks, while adapting to startlingly fast to new conditions. This fascinates scientists, who want to illuminate the fundamental principles of design and physics at play—both to understand biology and disease and to improve engineering.

To lead the center, prominent scientist Rama Ranganathan has joined UChicago as professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Institute for Molecular Engineering. He will also lead the BioCARS beamline at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.

“Collaboration across several scientific disciplines has always been a defining feature of research at the University of Chicago,” said Kenneth Polonsky, dean of the Biological Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Medicine, and executive vice president for medical affairs at the University of Chicago. “The creation of this new center, with Professor Ranganathan at the helm, continues that tradition as we explore the fundamental mechanisms that define all biological systems.”

Ranganathan studies the evolution of biological systems like proteins and cellular signaling—decoding the complex processes by which cells communicate with each other and sense their environments. His laboratory combines experimental laboratory work with modeling and simulation, all to unravel the dynamics of biological systems.

“My goal has always been the understanding of living systems and the design principles that underlie them,” Ranganathan said. “Thanks to a series of breakthroughs in the past decade, we’re now at a point where we can begin transitioning now from studying parts of the system to trying to understand the whole.”

Once one understands evolution, Ranganathan said, one can bring the same principles to bear to engineering; man-made machines lag far behind natural systems in their flexibility and resilience.

“Professor Ranganathan’s focus on understanding the curious mix of robustness and sensitivity of biological systems holds many instructive insights for several of the Institute for Molecular Engineering’s goals, such as our immunology program,” said Matt Tirrell, the founding Pritzker Director of the Institute for Molecular Engineering.

Ranganathan said that he was attracted to UChicago’s approach to basic science research. “I’ve always admired the University’s enormous commitment to fundamental sciences,” he said. The breadth of the University’s research was attractive as well: “This really resonates with my idea of the Center for Physics of Evolving Systems, which is to draw from the strengths of different areas to try to address this problem of evolution.”

Ranganathan arrives from the University of Texas-Southwestern, where he led the Cecil H. and Ida Green Center for Systems Biology.

He received his bachelor’s degree in bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and his MD and PhD from the University of California, San Diego.

Daniel S. Follmer, director of College Admissions, 1982-2017

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 09:50 -0600

Daniel S. Follmer, deputy dean and director of College Admissions at the University of Chicago, died of cancer on Nov. 4 at the age of 34.

Follmer joined the University in 2008 and was highly regarded by colleagues, students and families alike. Those close to him said his work reflected a passion for increasing access to higher education for students from underrepresented communities, enthusiasm for the liberal arts and enduring curiosity.

“He will be remembered for his kindness, his integrity and his great respect for the humanity in every person,” said Follmer’s brother, Max Follmer.

Follmer was responsible for daily operations in College Admissions, and played a key role in designing and implementing strategy. That approach included a more personalized outreach to prospective students, expanded scholarship opportunities for low-income families and a comprehensive professional development program for admissions counselors.

In addition, through his personal admissions recruiting efforts in the Manhattan borough of New York City, Follmer built relationships with thousands of students, families, teachers and college counselors. His work contributed to the College’s dramatic increase in applications and the number of students who view UChicago as their first choice.

“Daniel was especially passionate about helping his staff establish long and successful careers in admissions and higher education,” said James G. Nondorf, vice president of Enrollment and Student Advancement and dean of College Admissions and Financial Aid. “He served as a friend and mentor to several cohorts of College Admissions counselors at UChicago. He leaves a formidable legacy, and we will miss him greatly.”

A lifelong resident of Hyde Park, Follmer was one of many family members with deep connections to UChicago. Survivors include his wife, Jessica Rhoades; his parents, Anita Samen and David Follmer, AM’66; brother, Max Follmer; and sister, Sarah Follmer, AB’05.

A memorial service will be held on campus in Daniel Follmer’s honor at 11 a.m. Nov. 8 in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.

David L. Wallace, statistician who helped identify Federalist Papers authors, 1928-2017

Wed, 25 Oct 2017 15:12 -0500

Prof. Emeritus David L. Wallace, a statistician who co-authored a book that revealed the answer to one of American history’s most enduring questions, died on Oct. 9. He was 88.

Historians had puzzled over the authorship of 12 of the 85 Federalist Papers almost since they were written in 1788. Wallace and Prof. Frederick Mosteller of Harvard University applied statistical analysis and computational power to the problem, publishing their answer in 1964’s Inference & Disputed Authorship: The Federalist.

Their findings—that James Madison authored all 12—created a national stir, both for the answer and for how they put computers to work to arrive at it. Newspapers around the country, The New York Times and Chicago Tribune among them, wrote about Wallace and Mosteller, as did Time magazine.

Much of the news coverage on the Federalist Papers focused on their early application of computational power to statistics, an area in which Wallace would remain influential. But their work also was the first full-scale applied statistical analysis done using Bayesian methods—statistical theory based on the work of statistician Thomas Bayes.

“David Wallace’s study of the authorship of the Federalist Papers still stands among the best full-scale Bayesian statistical studies, and it has left a mark even as the profession has advanced, as an exemplar of what can be accomplished,” said Stephen M. Stigler, the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. “As a teacher and colleague he has shared deep insights into statistical methods, and those lessons are still being widely repeated several academic generations later.”

Wallace also was part of a team that in the 1960s helped develop modern methods of forecasting election outcomes based on early results, and worked as part of NBC’s election coverage.

Wallace joined the University in 1954 as an assistant professor. He remained at the University of Chicago until he retired in 1995, serving as chairman of the department from 1977 to 1980.

Wallace’s students said he challenged and helped them, while leaving a vivid image of himself as the professor in the white lab coat.

“He wore it to class to keep the chalk off his clothing, but we students didn't figure out that motivation until later, and it added to the mystique,” said Robert Kass, PhD’80, who is the Maurice Falk Professor of Statistics & Computational Neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon. “At a holiday party my first year I imitated David in a skit, and when I appeared in a lab coat, everyone immediately laughed.”

Ted Karrison, PhD’85, a University of Chicago research professor who was among the 16 doctoral students advised by Wallace, called him a rigorous and insightful who was very generous with his time.

“I recall very well that after our meetings, I would find in my mailbox notes and comments that he had written out just so I wouldn’t forget,” Karrison said.

Wallace’s wife of 62 years, Anna Mary Wallace, said her “extraordinary husband” had a deep love of architecture, as well as the outdoors, leading his family on camping trips across the country.

David L. Wallace is also survived by his brother, as well as three children and three grandchildren.

Roscoe Braham Jr., pioneering meteorologist, 1921-2017

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 12:28 -0500

Prof. Emeritus Roscoe Braham Jr., a noted expert in cloud precipitation physics who furthered weather research by combining the use of aircraft with ground-based instruments, died May 28 at the Glenaire Retirement Community in Cary, N.C. He was 96.

“He was a giant of experimental meteorology and was one of the pioneers using aircraft for weather research,” said Prof. Andrew Davis, chair of the University of Chicago’s Department of Geophysical Sciences.

Braham performed key research for The Thunderstorm Project, which operated from 1946 to 1949. A congressionally mandated, multi-agency program to improve aircraft safety in thunderstorms, the project was the nation’s first large-scale meteorological study.

Braham’s participation in the project led to his discovery of the convection-cell organization of thunderstorms, and to his co-authorship of The Thunderstorm, a classic in the annals of meteorology. He is further noted for discovering the coalescence-freezing mechanism of precipitation in clouds.

“The Thunderstorm Project was very significant,” said Frank Richter, the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor in Geophysical Sciences at UChicago. “It merged technical developments—for example instrumented aircraft and radar—to promote basic scientific insights and use these to develop practical strategies that made very important contributions to aircraft safety.”

These insights include recognition that radar could detect and guide aircraft around the most dangerous parts of thunderstorms.

“Today this is routine,” Braham commented in 1996, “but we must recall that during World War II radar was new, highly classified and essentially limited to the military.”

Braham also played a key role in promoting mutual respect between the faculties of the meteorology and geology departments at UChicago, which merged to become the department of geophysical sciences in 1961.

“The merging of two historic and highly successful departments of meteorology and geology would require the joint faculty to surrender a certain amount of their professional identity, which was bound to create a certain amount of friction,” Richter said. “Roscoe Braham on the meteorology side and Julian Goldsmith from geology were the key persons who by their civility and intellectual tolerance turned what could have been a very fractured new department into one that became a model of a more holistic approach to the earth sciences.”

Braham was born Jan. 3, 1921, in Yates City, Ill. He earned his bachelor’s degree in geology from Ohio University in 1941. He married Mary Ann Moll in 1943 in Xenia, Ohio.

During World War II, Braham served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, first as a weather officer, later as a bomber pilot. After his discharge in 1946, he entered graduate school at the University of Chicago to study cloud physics, earning his master’s degree in 1948 and his doctorate in 1951.

“He always stressed the importance of education, calling education our meal ticket,” said his son, Richard Braham, a professor of forestry at North Carolina State University. Two of Roscoe Braham’s daughters, Ruth Ann and Nancy, became grade school and high school teachers. His third daughter, Jean, became a registered nurse.

“His summer research locations were of necessity in areas largely removed from commercial airline traffic, allowing his plane to fly wherever needed,” Richard Braham recalled. “To keep the family together during the research season, the family would find a campground within commuting distance and set camp, often for as long as five to six weeks.”

Braham retired from UChicago in 1991. He and his wife then moved to Cary, N.C.

During his career Braham also served as a research meteorologist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, as founding director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona, and as a visiting scientist at North Carolina State University.

Braham was a co-founder of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. UCAR manages NCAR under sponsorship from the National Science Foundation.

He was author or co-author of more than 80 scientific reports, books and manuscripts.

Braham had collected many honors during his career, including the Silver Medal from the U.S. Department of Commerce for his work on the Thunderstorm Project. He also received the Rossby Research Medal from the American Meteorological Society, the Losey Award from the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences and an honorary doctorate from North Carolina State University.

Braham is survived by his wife, Mary Ann; daughters, Ruth Ann Ashton, Nancy Billingslea and Jean Barwig; son, Richard Braham; eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Memorial services were held. Donations may be made to the Edith Braham Endowment, which supports meteorology collections at the North Carolina State University Libraries.

Philip Gossett, scholar of 19th-century Italian opera, 1941–2017

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 14:29 -0500

Philip Gossett, an acclaimed musicologist and scholar of 19th-century Italian opera, died June 13 at his home in Hyde Park. He was 75.

Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Emeritus Professor in Music at the University of Chicago, conducted exhaustive research of composers such as Giuseppe Verdi and Gioachino Rossini. His work included uncovering forgotten operatic compositions, editing critical editions on such works as La gazzetta, and writing books, including the award-winning Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera.

In a 2010 interview, Gossett said he hadn’t planned to study Italian opera. “I was thrown into it because I began looking at available sources for some of the music of Rossini, and I discovered that every single source that I looked at was different from every other source, and at a certain point I had to ask myself, ‘well what did the man actually write?’” he said.

Born in New York, Gossett began studying piano at age five. During high school, he attended what is now Juilliard’s Pre-College Division. Gossett completed his undergraduate studies at Amherst College in music, having started in physics, and received his doctorate in musicology from Princeton University. He joined the University of Chicago in 1968.

“I’ll always treasure the memory of Philip as a scholar’s scholar, a musician’s scholar and a public scholar—all in full and equal measure,” said Anne Robertson, dean of the Division of the Humanities and the Claire Dux Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Music and the Humanities.

Over his 40 years of scholarship, Gossett helped unearth such operas as Verdi’s Stiffelio, which was staged at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1993. The Italian government recognized Gossett’s efforts with the Cavaliere di Gran Croce, the country’s highest civilian honor.

Gossett was the first musicologist to receive a Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award, a $1.5 million prize, and served as general editor of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi and of The Critical Edition of the Works Gioachino Rossini. His book Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera received the Gordon J. Laing Prize from the University of Chicago Press and Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society as the best book on music of the year.

After retiring from teaching full-time in 2010, Gossett continued to actively research, write and discover new opera masterpieces to share with modern audiences. Over a distinguished career, Gossett served as president of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Textual Scholarship, as dean of the Division of Humanities, and as a lecturer and consultant at opera houses and festivals in America and Italy.

James Chandler, the Barbara E. & Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English, remembers Gossett for his incredible passion for the University of Chicago, including during his time as dean from 1989 to 1999.

“Phil Gossett was probably the hardest working colleague I’ve ever known,” Chandler said. “I mostly got to know him after he became dean, a job he attacked with enormous zeal. He made you want to be a part of the institution to which he himself was so passionately committed.”

In 2017, Gossett donated his complete music collection of more than 2,000 items to The Julliard School as part of their special collections.

Gossett is survived by his wife, Suzanne Gossett, professor emerita of English at Loyola University Chicago; and sons David and Jeffrey.

Services were held on June 15 at KAM Isaiah Israel Temple in Chicago. A private burial will take place in New York.

Anne Pippin Burnett, renowned scholar of Greek poetry, 1925–2017

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 16:30 -0500

Prof. Anne Pippin Burnett, a renowned scholar of Greek poetry and a UChicago faculty member for more than three decades, passed away April 26 at her home in Kingston, Ontario. She was 91.

Burnett focused her research on Greek tragedies and lyrical poetry. She wrote extensively on the archaic and early classical periods, including three books on the ancient Greek poet, Pindar.

Burnett, professor emerita in the Department of Classics, first joined the UChicago faculty in 1961 as an assistant professor, becoming a professor in 1970. She served as chairman of the Department of Classical Languages and Literatures from 1969 thru 1973. She retired in 1992.

Longtime colleague Peter White, the Herman C. Bernick Family Professor in Classics and the College, remembered Burnett as a true star of the department.

“Anne chose to study poets like Euripides and Pindar who were challenging intellectually and brilliant verbally, which was just what her own writing was like,” said White, who joined the UChicago faculty in 1968. “Although she was a celebrity in our field, she did not seem to chase celebrity. She just wrote and wrote one interesting, original study after another, and her audience grew.”

Prior to her time at UChicago, Burnett taught at Vassar College and worked as an editor and translator at the Hachette publishing house.

Among her many honors during a distinguished academic career, Burnett was selected as a Guggenheim fellow in 1981 and delivered the Classics Department’s inaugural George B. Walsh Memorial Lecture in 1989.

She is survived by daughters Maud Burnett McInerney and Melissa Gromoff and three grandchildren.

A memorial service is planned for the fall.

Richard L. Baron, radiologist and authority on liver disease, 1949-2017

Fri, 02 Jun 2017 09:40 -0500

Richard Baron, professor and former chairman of the Department of Radiology at the University of Chicago, died suddenly while playing tennis on May 4. He was 68 years old.

One of the world’s leading authorities on diagnostic imaging of liver disease, Baron enjoyed a distinguished career in research, education and patient care. He served as chairman of radiology at the University of Chicago from 2002 to 2011 as well as dean for clinical practice and head of the faculty practice plan from 2011 to 2013. Prior to that, Baron was chairman of radiology at the University of Pittsburgh and founding president and CEO of the University of Pittsburgh Physicians.

He also served on the board of the Radiological Society of North America from 2008 to 2016 and as president of the board for 2015 to 2016. At the time of his death, he was a member of the American College of Radiology’s board of chancellors and a past president of both the Society of Gastrointestinal Radiology and the Society of Computed Body Tomography and Magnetic Resonance.

“The radiology faculty benefitted during his chairmanship, from his thoughtful guidance and his ability and eagerness to mentor younger colleagues,” recalled David Paushter, who succeeded Baron as chairman of radiology at the University of Chicago. “He was a master educator and a lifelong learner—a role model for trainees and clinical peers alike.”

Baron published more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific articles, 53 book chapters and review articles, and was co-editor of the textbook Multislice-CT of the Abdomen. He provided quality and safety expertise on national and international levels, serving on the Joint Commission Professional Technical Advisory Committee from 2007 to 2011 and providing guidance to the International Atomic Energy Commission and the World Health Organization. He was a popular speaker, presenting hundreds of invited lectures throughout the world.

He served as a reviewer for several journals, including Radiology, The American Journal of Roentgenology, The Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography, Liver Transplantation, Gastroenterology, and European Radiology, and was an associate editor of Radiology from 1991 to 1996 and of Liver Transplantation from 2004 to 2009.

“He was a master educator and a lifelong learner—a role model for trainees and clinical peers alike.”Prof. David Paushter

He earned international honors for his research and teaching—noteworthy among these awards were the Gold Medal of the Asian Oceanian Society of Radiology in 2014, the Medal of Honor and honorary membership in the French Radiological Society in 2015, and honorary membership in the European Society of Radiology in 2017.

Despite steady international recognition, one of his most urgent, high-profile investigations was close to home. On June 4, 2003, the Baseball Hall of Fame asked Baron to perform diagnostic X-rays on the two bats that Cubs player Sammy Sosa had used, one to hit his 500th home run and one for home runs 64, 65 and 66 in 1998. There was reason for suspicion: Sosa had been caught the day before using a corked bat.

“The Hall of Fame wanted to hear good news,” Baron said at the time. “There was tension, but we could tell right away that the bats were clean. The baseball people were quite relieved.”

But, ever meticulous, Baron wasn’t done. The X-rays were persuasive, but in this case, absolute certainty required a CT scan. Fortunately, one scan of both bats quickly confirmed the benign diagnosis.

Richard Lewis Baron was born March 11, 1949, in Springfield, Mass. He graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1972 and earned his medical degree and election to the student honor society Alpha Omega Alpha at the Washington University School of Medicine in 1976. His internship in internal medicine at Yale University was followed by a residency in radiology and an abdominal radiology fellowship at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University. Later in his career, faced with increasing administrative duties, he pursued further education in the MBA program at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh.

A mentor and family man

“He was a mentor so many people, residents as well as senior faculty,” recalled colleague and close friend Stephen Montner, professor of radiology. “The people he worked with tended to become close friends. As a leader, he was firm but very fair. He was warm and generous with his friends and colleagues, who soon became friends. And I have to say, he always took the side of right. I never met a man with so much integrity.”

“He will be greatly missed,” said Valerie P. Jackson, chair of the Radiological Society of North America’s Board of Directors. She described Baron as an “internationally respected abdominal imaging radiologist and an outstanding administrator,” adding that he was also “humble, kind-hearted and always willing to mentor others.”

“Although Rich was recognized internationally as a gifted leader, educator, physician and scientist, his peers tend to focus on his altruism and mentorship,” said Paushter. “This matches my experience. He was a thoughtful friend who helped guide colleagues and trainees through the difficult decisions of academic medicine, telling us to ‘take the high road,’ which he always did. He was the same with patients, placing them at the epicenter of his professional universe, long before it came into vogue.”

Despite the demands of his career, “the man that we knew at home was totally devoted to his family,” said his wife, Shirley Baron. “His focus was never on himself but rather on those he loved. We knew him as warm, loving, patient, generous and always available when needed.”

“He brought his energy for fun and his enthusiasm to the smallest of tasks of everyday life,” she added, “including cooking with me or just doing errands together. Richard was passionate about travel, skiing, tennis, and photography, which he loved to share with the rest of us. He was ‘all in’ when something was important to him.”

“He was also a great dad,” she said, “consistent in his messages. ‘Do your best,’ he told his children. ‘Nobody can ask for more than that.’ The basic message was: ‘Try hard; take your time; don't give up; I'm here for you.’”

Baron is survived by his wife Shirley Baron; their son, Tim Baron; daughter, Christine Turner; and Baron’s brother John.

In lieu of flowers, the Baron family requests that donations in memory of Richard Baron be made to the RSNA Research & Education Foundation, to support a young radiology researcher in abdominal imaging.

—This story first appeared on the ScienceLife blog.

David Rockefeller, University trustee and descendent of UChicago’s philanthropic founder, 1915-2017

Tue, 21 Mar 2017 12:07 -0500

David Rockefeller, PhD’40, a prominent philanthropist, banking executive and University trustee whose grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Sr., was the philanthropic founder of the University of Chicago, died on March 20. He was 101.

Rockefeller’s ties to the University spanned a lifetime, from touring Egypt and the Middle East as a teenager with distinguished University archaeologist James Henry Breasted to the endowment of a professorship in UChicago’s economics department, from which he received his doctorate. Rockefeller was associated with the University’s Board of Trustees for seven decades, providing a strong connection to the institution’s founding in 1890.

David Rockefeller was a leader in finance as chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and was a prominent philanthropist, serving as chairman of such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, the Council on Foreign Relations and Rockefeller University. His global work included the founding the Trilateral Commission, a non-partisan group to foster closer cooperation between the North America, Europe and Asia, and providing leadership and support for the International House Association, including International House at the University of Chicago.

“David Rockefeller led a truly remarkable life, characterized by his keen intellect, an understanding of global issues and a deep appreciation of the responsibility that his family’s legacy had given him,” said President Robert J. Zimmer. “He was a generous supporter of the University and offered the benefit of his experience and good judgment. He will be remembered here for his prominent role in the University’s history.”

Rockefeller was born in New York City on June 12, 1915 to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. He attended the Lincoln School in Harlem, which featured progressive teaching methods influenced by John Dewey. As a child and young man he knew his grandfather, the former leader of Standard Oil, who was one of the most influential corporate figures and philanthropists in American history, but whom David Rockefeller knew as a “benign, indulgent” patriarch who gave out dimes to children. “He was the least dour man I have ever known; he was constantly smiling, joking and telling shaggy dog stories,” David Rockefeller wrote in his 2003 book, Memoirs.

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David Rockefeller

Rockefeller remembered a youth filled with art and travel. In 1929, at age 14, Rockefeller and members of his family toured Egypt and the Middle East at the invitation of Breasted, whose work fascinated Rockefeller’s father. Such excursions “made us feel the excitement of the opportunities open to us and recognize the role the family was playing in so many areas. These experiences gave us an education that transcended formal learning,” Rockefeller wrote about the experience.

Rockefeller graduated from Harvard College in 1936, and after a year at the London School of Economics, arrived at UChicago to pursue a PhD. The school “boasted one of the premier economics faculties in the world…the fact that Grandfather had helped found the university played a distinctly secondary role in my choice,” he recalled. His thesis, “Unused Resources and Economic Waste,” was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1940.

“David was proud of his Chicago degree and spoke often of his admiration for the great economists he had encountered here,” said President Emeritus Hanna Holborn Gray. “He liked to reminisce about his boyhood trip with James Henry Breasted, which happened as the Oriental Institute and Chicago House in Luxor, Egypt became objects of the Rockefeller family’s philanthropy.”

While working on his dissertation, Rockefeller met Margaret “Peggy” McGrath. The couple were married for 55 years until McGrath’s death in 1996.

Service and leadership on a global stage

After completing his graduate work, Rockefeller began in government service, working for New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. During World War II, he served as an intelligence officer in North Africa and the south of France, achieving the rank of captain. With the return of peace, Rockefeller embarked on his career at Chase Manhattan and worked to continue his family’s tradition of philanthropy—what John D. Rockefeller Sr. called “the art of giving.” He was first elected as a trustee of the University of Chicago on May 8, 1947. He served as a trustee until 1963, became an honorary trustee until 1966, then was a life trustee until 2007 and was a trustee emeritus at the time of his death.

Rockefeller became chairman and chief executive of Chase, where he focused on global banking and developed important relationships with numerous world leaders. He was part of a generation of Rockefellers who held a prominent place in American civic life. His brother Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York and later vice president of the United States, while his brother Winthrop Rockefeller served as governor of Arkansas.

David Rockefeller’s civic work included helping New York City through its financial crisis, serving as a key supporter of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and leading Rockefeller University as chairman of its board of trustees. His many years of service to educational, civic and cultural institutions earned Rockefeller honors, including the U.S. Legion of Merit, the French Legion of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Gray said that when Rockefeller retired from Chase, the bank’s board decided to honor him by endowing a chair in his honor, rather than through a direct gift — after all, “what could you give a Rockefeller?”

There was a competition between Harvard and the University of Chicago for the chair, which was to be in international economics. Chicago won, and Rockefeller came for the announcement and dinner that inaugurated the chair. “He always remained interested in following its progress and learning of its incumbents,” Gray said.

The chair is now held by Nobel laureate Lars Hansen, the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics.

John W. Boyer, dean of the College and author of The University of Chicago: A History, said David Rockefeller valued what his family had begun at the University of Chicago, and he contributed to its later successes.

“David Rockefeller served with great distinction as an active trustee of the University, as a generous philanthropist in support of the University’s academic programs and as a wise adviser to several of our presidents,” Boyer said. “The gifts of his grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Sr., to the early University of Chicago were primarily responsible for the founding of one of the great new research universities in modern America, setting a model for those who would follow in advancing the well-being of American higher education and society. David Rockefeller shared with his grandfather and his father a deep conviction about the profound responsibilities that the great American universities bear in enhancing the intellectual creativity and cultural progress of American civic life.”

Rockefeller is survived by five of his children, David Rockefeller Jr., Abigail Rockefeller, Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, Peggy Dulany and Ellen Rockefeller Growald. He was preceded in death by his son Richard Rockefeller.

Robert Gomer, chemist, longtime teacher and cherished colleague, 1924-2016

Wed, 11 Jan 2017 13:59 -0600

Prof. Emeritus Robert Gomer, a chemical physicist who pioneered techniques for studying molecules and taught at the University of Chicago for nearly a half-century, died Dec. 12 of complications related to Parkinson’s disease. He was 92.

In his research, Gomer studied the emission, diffusion and absorption of atoms and molecules on ultraclean surfaces. That work started, Gomer once wrote, “after hearing a seminar account of E.W. Muller’s field emission microscope. I built one and became active in developing this instrument as a tool for surface studies.”

Gomer was a pioneer in the modern discipline of surface physics and chemistry, said Steven Sibener, the Carl William Eisendrath Distinguished Service Professor in Chemistry and the James Franck Institute. “His lifelong work on the surface diffusion of atoms and adsorbates on metallic surfaces represent research that has withstood the test of time, and provided foundational information for the generations of researchers that followed in his areas of interest.”

Gomer first came to the University in 1950 as an instructor in the Department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute. He served as director of the James Franck Institute from 1977 to 1983 and was named the Carl W. Eisendrath Distinguished Service Professor in 1984.

“Chicago offered a sense of belonging and a sense of being a part, however modestly, of a great adventure,” Gomer once wrote. Richard Gomer said his father will be fondly remembered for his collegiality.

“He viewed his colleagues and students as family,” said Richard Gomer, a professor of biology at Texas A&M University. “He loved having lunch with chemists and physicists daily at the Quad Club. It was a real meeting of the minds, but one that would often end with a game of billiards.”

After Gomer became a professor emeritus in 1996, he and his wife, Ann, organized regular interdisciplinary talks for faculty in their Hyde Park home. “This is the institution that became, about five years ago, the Robert and Ann Gomer lecture series, which I chair and which meets about six times a year,” said David Bevington, the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus. “Bob was a true inspiration to us all and will be greatly missed.”

Gomer approached science and research “as a contest with nature,” said Lanny Schmidt, Gomer’s former student and now a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota. “He personalized every problem in a way that made it fun to do research. The tedious tasks were still part of the overall contest.

“One time we were working on an intricate spot-welding problem,” Schmidt added. “Upon completion Bob said, ‘Now we’ve got Mother Nature right where we want her!’”

Richard Gomer recalls that his father was a tough grader who wasn’t afraid to give out Ds and Fs. “His only reason for doing this was to set high standards, as he always did for himself, as well as for others,” he said. “This inspired many people to pursue research. He spent a minimal amount of time in his office; he was constantly working in the lab.”

Critic of nuclear weapons

Born in Vienna, Austria in 1924, Gomer went to England in 1938 as a refugee child, came to the United States in 1940 and went to Pomona College. After serving in the U.S. Army, he received his PhD in chemistry at the University of Rochester in 1949.

Gomer was an outspoken opponent of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He was a regular contributor to and chaired the editorial board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a journal founded by Manhattan Project physicists that covers policy issues related to the dangers of nuclear weapons.

In 1966, Gomer was one of four scientists who wrote a classified report for the Department of Defense about the potential use of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. “Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia” concluded that such strikes would be catastrophic for U.S. global interests. “It was our purpose to show that using nuclear weapons would be an immoral folly and set an awful precedent,” Gomer said.

Gomer was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. He was an Atomic Energy Commission Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow at UChicago. He also was a Guggenheim fellow at the University of Paris, and a Fulbright fellow at the Technical University of Vienna.

He won several awards, including the Bourke Lecturer from the Faraday Society, the Kendall Award in Colloid or Surface Science from the American Chemical Society, the Senior U.S. Scientist Award from the A. von Humboldt Society, and the Davisson-Germer Prize in Surface Physics from the American Physical Society.

He wrote Field Emission and Field Ionization (1961) and edited several scientific journals, including Applied Physics.

“We shared many conversations on the nature of atomic-level dynamics at interfaces,” Sibener said. “This topic and associated scientific advances remain at the forefront of science today, contributing many crucial ideas to what is now popularly referred to as the field of nanoscience.”

Gomer is survived by his wife, Anne; son Richard; daughter, Maria Luczkow; and grandchildren Katie, Anna and Julia.

Janellen Huttenlocher, pioneering scholar in childhood development, 1932–2016

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 10:42 -0600

Janellen Huttenlocher, a pioneer in the field of childhood development whose research explored how children acquire language, understand space and learn math, died Nov. 20 in Chicago. She was 84.

The William S. Gray Professor Emeritus in Psychology, Huttenlocher was a researcher, teacher and mentor at the University of Chicago for four decades. Her research delved into a broad range of topics such as categorization, spatial coding and memory—themes scholars continue to explore. It was marked by groundbreaking work on the role of environment in the development of language skills, including the importance of parents talking to their young children often and in complex sentences.

“Janellen was a big ideas person and had a lot of influence because of that,” said Susan Levine, the Rebecca Anne Boylan Professor of Education and Society, who worked closely with Huttenlocher. “She was a pioneer in early childhood research, including her work on language development and the effects of parents.”

Huttenlocher’s impact in the field of psychology included co-authoring the books Making Space: The Development of Spatial Representation and Reasoning and Quantitative Development in Infancy and Early Childhood, as well as publishing hundreds of research articles. Her scholarship spanned 60 years from her first publication in 1956 to her last in 2015.

Her work on the role of environment in the development of language skills carry on through a multi-year project at UChicago on children and language funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The group of researchers includes Levine, Susan Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor; Stephen Raudenbush, the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor; and Assoc. Prof. Lindsey Richland.

Kelly Mix, AM’93, PhD’95, a former student of Huttenlocher’s who is chair of the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland, said Huttenlocher’s research explored a broad range of topics, but was always marked by a common-sense elegance that provided simple explanations about how children develop.

“I learned so much from watching how she thought about things, how she tackled problems,” Mix said. “Janellen would always say, ‘We came for the truth.’ She didn’t want the data to support what she already was thinking, but rather, reveal what was actually happening.”

‘An eye on both adult and kid’

Huttenlocher was born in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1932. She received her undergraduate education at the University of Buffalo and married Peter Huttenlocher shortly after graduating. The couple, which their family described as best friends, collaborated on research at UChicago, where Peter was a renowned neuroscientist, pediatric neurologist and professor.

Janellen Huttenlocher came to UChicago in 1974 after earnings a master’s and doctorate at Harvard University and serving as a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University.

Over the next four decades, her research explored many topics, including early mathematical thinking in children from different socioeconomic groups and the relationship between exposure and vocabulary and syntactic growth. Her work on mathematical development showed that children form mental models of sets and set transformations, and that learning of number words propelled their understanding. She also found that nonverbal mathematical thinking was much more similar across socioeconomic groups than verbal mathematical thinking.

With respect to language, Huttenlocher found that the more a parent spoke to a child, the more the child’s vocabulary grew. Her research also found that speaking in complex sentences rather than simple ones is important for the development of children’s language comprehension.

More broadly, Huttenlocher’s work challenged the idea a child’s ability to learn is driven primarily by inherited traits. In one example, her research found that children’s ability to learn fluctuates depending on whether they were spending time in school during the school year or out of school during the summer months. The work was cited as an argument for year-round schooling.

“She was really ahead of her time in wanting to understand childhood development and adult cognition,” said Nora Newcombe, the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University, who collaborated with Huttenlocher in researching spatial development and spatial cognition. “She always kept an eye on both adult and kid. Even today they are very separate worlds.”

Besides her prolific career as a researcher, Huttenlocher helped draw top psychology scholars to UChicago and mentored and taught many students, influencing new generations of psychologists who are on the faculty at universities and colleges across the country. Even into retirement, she remained an active research collaborator and frequently attended colloquia and the weekly developmental seminar in UChicago’s Department of Psychology.

Newcombe described Huttenlocher as having a keen mind and a love of classical music and the arts. She also was deeply devoted to her children.

Huttenlocher was preceded in death by her husband. She is survived by her children: Daniel, Anna and husband Andrew, Carl and wife Tami, and six grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Jan. 28 at Montgomery Place, 5550 S. Shore Drive, Chicago. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the University of Chicago Department of Psychology.

Charles E. Bidwell, scholar who studied sociology of education, 1932-2016

Thu, 17 Nov 2016 16:15 -0600

Charles E. Bidwell, an influential sociologist and former chair of the Departments of Education and Sociology at the University of Chicago, died Nov. 6. He was 84.

Bidwell, AB’50, AM’53, PhD’56, whose time as student and teacher at the University spanned seven decades, was the William Claude Reavis Professor Emeritus. His research focused on the organization of educational institutions and how decisions are made, from the classroom to the community level. He chaired the Department of Education for a decade and later chaired the Department of Sociology. Bidwell also served as editor of the American Journal of Sociology and American Journal of Education.

“Charles Bidwell influenced the thinking of a generation of sociology of education scholars in significant ways,” said Sara Ray Stoelinga, AB’95, PhD’04, the Sara Liston Spurlark Director of the Urban Education Institute and a former student of Bidwell. “But the essence of Charles to me were the values he brought to his daily work: his deep commitment to the mentoring of students and faculty, his integrity and high standards, and his kindness.”

Bidwell’s son Charles L. Bidwell said his father’s interest in sociology took root while a student at the University’s Laboratory Schools when he did a project on the Tennessee Valley Authority. As a boy, Charles remembers driving around Chicago with his father, who would tell him stories about the neighborhoods and how they were changing.

“He was best storyteller I ever knew,” Charles said. “My Dad was fascinated by people and so intrigued by the way the city developed, its ethnic mix and all the standards, practices and values that groups brought to the city and how they interacted and mixed.”

Bidwell was born on Jan. 24, 1932 in Chicago. His initial connection to the University was through his mother, Eugenia Bidwell, who was a graduate of the Class of 1924. He graduated from the Laboratory Schools and enrolled at the University as a 14-year-old under a program created by then-President Robert M. Hutchins.

Bidwell received his bachelor’s degree in 1950 followed by a master’s and a doctorate from the University in 1953 and 1956, respectively. He was drafted in 1957 and spent two years as a researcher and speechwriter in Army headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he met his wife Helen. Bidwell was recruited to Harvard University by famed sociologist Talcott Parsons. But after two years there, he found the lure of Chicago to be strong and joined UChicago in 1961 as an assistant professor.

Bidwell spent the next four decades at the University. Edward O. Laumann, the George H. Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology, remembered his friend as incredibly bright and curious. He loved debating ideas, but never raised his voice and was the consummate gentleman.

“He was an exemplar of much of what we talk about today at the University around diversity, freedom of inquiry, and a willingness to pursue ideas and not celebrate petty wins,” Laumann said. “In his work, Charles was interested in trying to understand something so people could make it more successful, more effective.”

Bidwell’s scholarship has had considerable influence on the sociology of education, beginning with his seminal 1965 chapter, The School as a Formal Organization. Drawing upon and extending Willard Waller’s Sociology of Teaching, Bidwell built a series of scholarly works which sought to understand the motivations of the variety of actors in and around schools within the layered contexts of classrooms, schools, districts and the larger society. His work is known for its attention to micro-level factors, mechanisms that shape organizational behavior and evolution, and broad theoretical applications to other organizational forms.

Bidwell’s work reignited interest in the application of formal organizational theory to schools, influencing the thinking of a generation of scholars focused on the sociology of education. Later in his career, Bidwell extended his exploration of the formal organization of the school into inquiries that considered the work of teachers within schools and classrooms in more detail, drawing upon a variety of methods from grounded theory, to qualitative data collection, to social network analysis.

Bidwell shaped the Department of Education after the closure of the University’s School of Education, recruiting and retaining top scholars as chairman. He presided over the hiring of professors in economics, sociology, psychology and statistics, seeking a comprehensive research approach to education. He executed a similar strategy in the Department of Sociology, hiring six faculty who became the core of a new generation of Chicago sociology.

Bidwell was deeply involved as a teacher and mentor, chairing 39 dissertations and serving on another 30 committees in sociology alone. His students teach at major universities and serve in research centers focused on education.

Bidwell’s honors included the American Sociological Association’s Willard Waller Award, which recognizes distinguished scholarly contributions to the field of sociology of education.

Bidwell is survived by his son and daughter-in-law Rebecca Mullen and two grandchildren, Andrew and Emma. He is preceded in death by his wife. A memorial service will be held at a later date.

Isaac Abella, physicist, teacher and resident master, 1934-2016

Thu, 03 Nov 2016 16:00 -0500

Prof. Emeritus Isaac Abella, a popular teacher, cherished resident master and noted physicist who worked on the early development of lasers, died Oct. 23 in Chicago of complications related to cancer. He was 82.

Abella taught at the University of Chicago for nearly five decades and was a longtime resident master at the Shoreland residence hall. As a physicist, he specialized in laser physics, quantum optics and spectroscopy of rare-Earth laser materials. While an accomplished scholar, his first love was teaching and mentoring students.

“Teaching was his forte, and mentoring undergraduate students is what he would be the proudest of,” said his son Benjamin Abella, an associate professor and physician at the University of Pennsylvania. “He made his classroom like a conversation. He was almost gleeful in his desire to share stories and engage students. That was his magic.”

At UChicago, Prof. Henry J. Frisch remembered how he and Abella discussed ways to teach physics topics, such as the concept of special relativity or the Coriolis force, which describes the effect of Earth’s rotation on the motion of terrestrial objects.

He made his classroom like a conversation. He was almost gleeful in his desire to share stories and engage students. That was his magic.Benjamin Abella on his father, Prof. Emeritus Isaac Abella

“He cared deeply about transmitting the essence of the physics,” Frisch said. “He was a very popular and successful teacher who was extremely interested in pedagogy.”

Abella and his wife, Mary Ann Abella, were resident masters for 16 years at Shoreland, serving as mentors and hosting events from pizza parties in the dorm to field trips to the Lyric Opera.

Katie Callow-Wright, UChicago’s vice president and chief of staff in the Office of President, met the Abellas in 2000 when she moved into the Shoreland as assistant director of housing. She described the couple as a “force of nature” at Abella’s memorial service on Oct. 26 at Congregation Rodfei Zedek in Hyde Park.

“I became part of the well-organized machine the Abellas had created to support the engaged, interesting, complex community they fostered so thoughtfully as resident masters of the Shoreland,” she said.

Abella was born in Toronto, Canada in 1934. He earned a bachelor of arts in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto in 1957, and then earned a master’s and doctorate in physics from Columbia University.

While at Columbia, he worked under Nobel laureate Charles H. Townes, conducting research on early lasers. His thesis is among the earliest works on two-photon absorption. He wrote Some Properties of Ruby Optical Masers with Applications to Non-Linear Effects, which was published in 1963.

Abella started teaching at UChicago in 1965. He won the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1969.

During his career, Abella was a fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colo.; a visiting scientist at the Optical Sciences Division of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.; a guest scientist at the National Bureau of Standards at the Boulder Laboratories; and research fellow at Argonne National Laboratory.

He has served on the Education Committee of the American Physical Society; chaired APS’ Education Committee of Laser Science Topical Group; and chaired APS’s Frank Isakson Prize for Optical Effects in Solids Committee. He was elected fellow of the APS, fellow of the Optical Society and president of the Chicago Chapter of Sigma Xi. In addition, Abella was a member of the National Research Council’s National Science Standards Working Group, which published the K-12 National Science Standards in 1996.

Abella was a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Undergraduate Science Education, which addressed science literacy in the United States. He was also a member of the NAS Mathematics (K-12) Standards Review Committee on behalf of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. He also played a big role in University of Chicago’s Physics Department Teaching Activities Committee.

Abella retired from the University in 2011.

Abella was a frequent writer of letters to the editor. One printed in the New York Times in 1992 addressed the physics behind conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It attracted quite a bit of attention, including Abella being interviewed on a TV program hosted by Penn & Teller, a comedy duo who were taking a skeptical look at conspiracy theories.

Abella is survived by his son, Benjamin; daughter, Sarah Abella; brother, Jack Abella; sister, Bracha Glass; and his six grandchildren: Lillie, Hannah, Sam, Max, Asher and Avi. He was preceded in death by his wife, Mary Ann.