UChicago News

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Phil C. Neal, former Law School dean, 1919-2016

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 15:00 -0500

Former University of Chicago Law School Dean Phil C. Neal, an antitrust expert, litigator and law firm founder whose ability to cut through complexity earned him a reputation as a deft problem-solver, died Sept. 27. He was 97.

Neal was a professor at the Law School for 21 years starting in 1961 and served as its sixth dean between 1963 and 1975. He taught a wide range of subjects, including elements of the law, antitrust and constitutional law. As dean, he hired many influential scholars, including Richard Posner, now a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals; the late Ronald Coase, the 1991 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics; Gerhard Casper, Norval Morris, Frank Zimring, William Landes and Geoffrey R. Stone.

Neal began a new phase of his long career as senior partner at Neal Gerber Eisenberg, the Chicago-based law firm he helped found in 1986. During his time in private practice, Neal litigated cases on a wide range of issues, from antitrust to school desegregation, and advised the corporate boards of major companies. In the 1950s and 1960s, Neal was appointed to several high-profile government bodies, serving as chairman of the Pacific Regional Enforcement Commission of the Wage Stabilization Board, executive secretary of the Coordinating Committee for Multi-District Litigation for the United States District Courts and chair of a White House task force on antitrust policy.

“Phil Neal led an exceptional career of service and responsibility,” said Dean Thomas J. Miles, the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics. “He was one of our longest-serving deans, and he led the Law School during a time of extraordinary change for our country and the legal profession. The Law School is forever better thanks to his leadership. Were that not enough, he was an elite practitioner, served in multiple high-level positions in the government, and even founded a major law firm. His career is a model of leadership for all lawyers.”

Neal was an agile thinker who could “untangle Gordian knots where others were just sort of lost,” said his son, Andrew Neal. “He was very intelligent, quick-witted and didn’t suffer fools gladly. But he was also incredibly gracious, and very deliberate and thoughtful in the way he approached problems—life problems or legal problems—and he would not stand pat on whatever the thinking of the day was about anything.”

This enabled Neal to “see the core simplicity” in even the most complex issues, said Stephen Fedo, JD’81, Neal Gerber Eisenberg’s general counsel and former student of Neal’s.

“He was brilliant at cutting away the underbrush from an issue, and he was wonderful at articulating the simple truth of a problem in the most simple, elegant prose I’ve ever read,” Fedo said. “His real strength, as a lawyer and as a friend, is that he was always present when he spoke to you. His focus was on that person’s concerns, and on finding a way to address those concerns.”

Neal, who was born in Chicago and graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 1936, received his undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Harvard in 1940, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1943. While in law school, Neal was president of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Neal served for two years as a law clerk to Justice Robert H. Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court. He joined the faculty at Stanford Law School in 1948 after working at a law firm in San Francisco for several years. While at Stanford, Neal introduced Jackson to a student named William H. Rehnquist, who would also serve as his law clerk. Rehnquist was one of two future U.S. Supreme Court justices whom Neal taught at Stanford; the other was Sandra Day O’Connor.

Roberta Cooper Ramo, JD’67, who was a student during Neal’s deanship, cited him as having played a pivotal role as she broke through gender barriers in the legal profession. Ramo—the first woman president of the American Bar Association and the first woman president of the American Law Institute—recalled Neal’s support as she accepted the ABA Medal, the group’s highest honor, last year.

“In 1967 when I couldn't find anyone who would even answer my letters as [my husband and I] were about to move to North Carolina … [Dean Neal] called me in to find out why I didn’t have a job,” she said. “When I explained, without hesitation and with me sitting right there, he picked up the phone and called [former North Carolina] Gov. Terry Sanford, who just stepped down from the governorship. He demanded that Gov. Sanford personally take on the job of finding me some place to work, posthaste. And out of fear of Phil Neal, he did.”

Even during his years in private practice, Neal stayed on top of what was happening at the Law School and the University of Chicago.

“He cherished his years at the Law School, and it was always in his heart,” his son Andrew Neal said. “He was very invested in the whole University and remained so until the end of his life.”

Neal is survived by his wife, Linda Thoren Neal, JD’67; three sons, Stephen (Michelle S. Rhyu), Timothy (Laurie) and Andrew (Holly A. Harrison); 13 grandchildren; and one great-grandson. He was preceded in death by his son Richard, who died in 2015.

A memorial celebration will be held at 4 p.m. on Dec. 5, in the Glen Lloyd Auditorium of the University of Chicago Law School. In lieu of flowers gifts may be made to scholarship funds at The University of Chicago Law School or Music of the Baroque.

—Article originally appeared on the University of Chicago Law School website.

Menachem Brinker, Hebrew studies scholar and activist, 1935-2016

Thu, 22 Sep 2016 16:45 -0500

Prof. Emeritus Menachem Brinker was known for his pioneering scholarship on philosophy and Hebrew literature as well as the relationships between philosophy, literature and society. The University’s first Henry Crown Professor of Modern Hebrew Language and Literature in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, he established the Modern Hebrew Language and Literature program at UChicago in 1995 and held the first chair in the program.

The noted Hebrew scholar, Israel Prize laureate and peace activist died Aug. 11 of pancreatic cancer at his home in Jerusalem. He was 81.

In 2004, he was awarded the Israel Prize—the most highly regarded award in Israel—for Hebrew and general literary research. He was the author of numerous books; among them the authoritative work on Yosef Haim Brenner, a Russian pioneer of modern Hebrew literature. He divided his time between Chicago and Hebrew University until his 2005 retirement, when he returned to Israel.

Brinker also was a prominent political activist who was one of the first to advocate for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He co-founded the critical literary and political review magazine EMDA (Hebrew for “position, opinion, policy”) and was its first editor. Then he co-founded Peace Now and was one of the leaders of the organization, Israel’s pre-eminent peace movement, well into the 1980s and ‘90s.

“He was a voice of sanity relating to Israel,” said Josef Stern, the William H. Colvin Professor of Philosophy Emeritus and the inaugural director of the Chicago Center for Jewish Studies, remembering Brinker as a cultured, witty and intellectual colleague. “In exchanges, he could be wonderfully critical,” Stern said, but Brinker’s criticisms were well received because of his “extremely warm personality.”

Besides teaching and building the Modern Hebrew Language and Literature program, Brinker helped bolster the University’s library, filling gaps in its collection in his fields of expertise, Stern said.

Paul Mendes-Flohr, the Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of Modern Jewish History and Thought, considered Brinker a beloved friend and mentor.

“Not only was Menachem generous intellectually, he was also blessed with the gift of friendship, which he nurtured and sustained with unflagging care and concern,” he said.

“As one of Israel’s most esteemed public intellectuals, his probing critiques of its cultural and political life attained a unique resonance precisely because they bore the stamp of a compelling existential concern for the ethical and spiritual direction the country had taken,” Mendes-Flohr said.

Brinker was born in Jerusalem on Sept. 20, 1935. Before commencing his university studies, Menachem was a shepherd in a left-wing kibbutz. In 1954, he completed his undergraduate degree in Hebrew literature and philosophy. He studied literature, linguistic theory and philosophy at Edinburgh and Oxford universities in 1966, and then earned his doctorate in philosophy at Tel Aviv University in 1974.

Brinker fought as part of the Jerusalem Brigade during the Six-Day War and also fought in the Yom Kippur War. In 1968, he was appointed a lecturer in the Tel Aviv University philosophy department, and a year later he was appointed to the department of poetics and comparative literature, which he also helped found.

In addition, Brinker was among the founders of the Israel Philosophical Association in 1967. Beginning in 1983, he taught philosophy and Hebrew literature at Hebrew University. At the same time, he served as a literary editor at the Keter publishing house. He was a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Mendes-Flohr said his friendship with Brinker was sealed when they were both on the faculty of Hebrew University. Mendes-Flohr “consulted with him about a concept coined by Jean-Paul Sartre, whom he knew personally and about whom he had written extensively.”

He said Brinker knew hundreds of poems by heart, not only in Hebrew but also English, French, German, Russian, Yiddish and even a few in Arabic. In his last weeks, Brinker composed a poem in alternating stanzas in Hebrew, English and French, and though he was too weak to write it down, he would recite it to his friends.

“What I do recall is his joyful and mellifluous recitation of this, his last poem, which he took with him to his final resting place,” Mendes-Flohr said. “As one says in Hebrew, “zikhrono le’vracha: May his memory be a blessing to all who loved him and to the many whom he loved. “

Brinker is survived by his partner, Janet Aviad, and his daughter, Hagit. His son, Gadi, died in 2010.

Services have been held in Israel. At his request, no eulogies were given, but poems were recited by some of Israel’s eminent writers.

James W. Cronin, Nobel laureate and pioneering physicist, 1931-2016

Sat, 27 Aug 2016 08:00 -0500

James W. Cronin, a pioneering scientist who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1980 for his groundbreaking work on the laws governing matter and antimatter and their role in the universe, died Aug. 25 in Saint Paul, Minn. He was 84.

Cronin, SM’53, PhD’55, spent much of his career at the University of Chicago, first as a student and then a professor. A University Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics, he was remembered this week as a mentor, collaborator and visionary.

“He inspired us all to reach further into the unknown with deep intuition, solid scientific backing and poetic vision,” said Angela Olinto, the Homer J. Livingston Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics. “He accepted his many recognitions and accolades with so much humility that he encouraged many generations to follow his vision.”

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James W. Cronin images

Edward “Rocky” Kolb, dean of the Physical Sciences Division and the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics, described Cronin as “a person of real honesty and integrity who was a mentor and friend to so many people.”

“Just like in basketball, there are good players in science, but the greatest players are the ones who make the people around them better. Jim was that great player,” Kolb said.

Cronin’s research that resulted in the Nobel Prize came in 1964 while he was working with Val Fitch at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The two scientists, who were Princeton University professors at the time, observed the first example of nature’s preference for matter over antimatter. Without the phenomenon, which physicists refer to as charge-parity violation, no matter would exist in the universe.

Cronin and Fitch studied the short-lived subatomic particles that appeared after the collision of accelerated protons and the nucleus of an atom. They observed indirect charge-parity violation, which is the unbalanced mixing of neutral subatomic kaon particles with their charged antiparticles. Called the Fitch-Cronin effect, the finding showed that some physical laws are violated when the direction of time is reversed. It also lent support for the big bang theory of the universe’s origin.

He inspired us all to reach further into the unknown with deep intuition, solid scientific backing and poetic vision.Prof. Angela Olinto of James Cronin

Cronin later in his career shifted his focus, becoming co-leader of the Pierre Auger Project. The $50 million international collaboration of 250 scientists across 16 nations focused on the mysterious sources of rare but extremely powerful cosmic rays that periodically bombard Earth. The project led to the creation of the Auger Observatory, which consists of a vast array of cosmic-ray detectors in Argentina.

“It was 25 years ago since Jim and I first conceived the idea of what became the Auger Collaboration. It was definitely a great partnership as we drummed up financial and scientific support for the collaboration,” said Alan Watson, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Leeds and a fellow of the Royal Society.

The collaboration has made definitive measurements on the energy spectrum of cosmic rays, on the patterns of their arrival directions, and on their mass compositions. It also has conducted particle physics research, measuring phenomena that far exceed the energies of the Large Hadron Collider.

“It’s been an outstanding success, and it’s still going strong,” Watson said.

Drawing inspiration from Fermi

Cronin was born on Sept. 29, 1931, in Chicago, while his father was a graduate student in classical languages and literatures at the University of Chicago. The younger Cronin received a bachelor’s from Southern Methodist University in 1951 before returning to the University of Chicago as a National Science Foundation Fellow to earn his master’s and doctoral degrees.

Cronin met his first wife, Annette Martin, while both were students at the University. She died in 2005, and Cronin married Carol McDonald (nee Champlin) in late 2006.

Cronin began his scientific career at Brookhaven before becoming a member of the physics faculty at Princeton in 1958. In 1971, he joined the University of Chicago, where he was appointed the University Professor of Physics. He became University Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics in 1997.

Cronin shared a birthdate with Prof. Enrico Fermi, who earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938. Cronin, who knew Fermi from his graduate school days at UChicago, organized a symposium in 2001 to mark the 100th anniversary of Fermi’s birth, and was editor of the resulting book, Fermi Remembered. It included contributions from seven Nobel Prize recipients and many other scientists who studied under or worked with Fermi at UChicago.

“What’s significant about Fermi is if you look through his career, he never just did the same thing. He kept moving on to new scientific challenges,” Cronin once said of Fermi. The same statement also could be applied to Cronin and his research shift from high-energy physics to ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

Cronin’s honors include the University of Chicago Alumni Medal (2013), an honorary doctoral degree from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany (2013), election as a foreign member of the Royal Society of London (2007), Distinguished Graduate Award of SMU’s Dedman College (2004), Legion d’honneur of France (2001), National Medal of Science (1999), University of Chicago’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1994), Laureate of Lincoln Academy of Illinois (1981), Ernest Lawrence Memorial Award for outstanding contributions in the field of atomic energy (1977), John Price Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute (1975) and the Research Corporation Award (1968).

In 1990 Cronin delivered the Ryerson Lecture, which provides an opportunity each year for a distinguished faculty member to address the UChicago community on significant aspects of his or her research.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Physical Society, American Philosophical Society, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei of Italy, Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Cronin also had received honorary doctorates from l’Université Pierre et Marie Curie, University of Leeds, Université de Franche Conte, Novo Gorica Polytechnique of Slovenia, University of Nebraska and the University of Santiago de Compostela and the Colorado School of Mines. Cronin served as international chair of the College de France in 1999-2000.

Cronin is survived by his wife, Carol; daughter, Emily Grothe; son, Daniel Cronin; and six grandchildren: James, Cathryn, Caroline, Meredith, Alex and Marlo. A daughter, Cathryn Cranston, died in 2011.

Arrangements for a memorial service are pending.

Halil Inalcik, historian of Ottoman Empire and University Professor, 1916-2016

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 15:30 -0500

Prof. Halil Inalcik, a preeminent expert on the Ottoman Empire who trained two generations of scholars in the United States and Turkey, died on July 25. He was 100 years old.

Inalcik’s research was critical in elevating the Ottoman period to a leading role in the study of world history. His scholarly work was marked by rigorous research of source materials, and his writings, including The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600, became critical texts for historians around the world.

“Without exaggeration one really has to say he not only created but actually built the study of things Ottoman and the Ottoman Empire in its many cultural, political and economic contexts. He was really and truly the master,” said Cornell Fleischer, the Kanuni Suleyman Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies.

Inalcik was born in Istanbul in the final years of the Ottoman Empire and received his formal education in Turkey, completing his PhD at the University of Ankara in 1942. He later wrote his childhood in Istanbul partly drew him to his field of study, but a bigger factor was the rich and expansive source materials from the Ottoman period.

Inalcik was recruited to UChicago in the early 1970s from the University of Ankara by Prof. William McNeill, a pioneer in the field of world history. Inalcik, who also taught at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University, became one of UChicago’s early University Professors, an appointment reserved for scholars with internationally recognized eminence in their fields and potential for high impact across the University.

Inalcik held appointments in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

“Halil Inalcik was a scholar of international repute whose work was marked by high erudition, superb critical analysis and an extraordinary command of vast historical sources. We were greatly honored that he was a member of our faculty,” said John W. Boyer, the Martin A. Ryerson Professor in History and dean of the College.

At the University, Inalcik trained a series of young historians who became top scholars, while continuing his own research, which spanned the history of Crimea, Albania and Anatolia in the 15th century to Bulgaria in the 19th century. His work encompassed social, political and economic history from peasants to sultans.

“Professor Inalcik transformed the field of Ottoman studies from an obscure and exotic sub-field into one of the leading historical disciplines. He has set the agenda for critical analysis and understanding of a crucial time period in world history,” said Fariba Zarinebaf, PhD’91, a former student of Inalcik and associate professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of California at Riverside.

Inalcik retired from the University in 1986 and became a professor emeritus. He returned to Turkey and founded the history department at Bilkent University in Ankara. Inalcik received numerous honors during his lifetime, including 23 honorary doctorates and awards in Turkey for his contributions to history and culture.

Inalcik wrote about his life and career in an essay published in 1993, including his time at the University. One of his favorite memories was a visit to campus by dervishes from Turkey who practice Islamic mysticism. He remembered being deeply moved as their cries reverberated off the ceiling of a University chapel.

Gary Toback, renowned authority on kidney disease, 1941-2016

Tue, 26 Jul 2016 13:10 -0500

Gary Toback, professor of medicine and former interim section chief of nephrology, died July 20 when he was struck by a vehicle while jogging near his South Shore home.

Toback, a highly respected authority on kidney disease, especially the use of renal growth factors to treat acute kidney injury, was a loyal, productive and popular member of the faculty for 42 years. He was devoted to the care of patients with kidney disease and the education of medical students.

He was also a highly respected clinical scientist. His earliest studies focused on potassium and the kidney, and on the development of kidney stones. Later in his career he concentrated on proteins associated with regeneration of kidney tissues. More recently, in collaboration with colleagues in gastroenterology, he searched for proteins that could prevent damage or speed recovery for gastric epithelial tissues, with a particular emphasis on inflammatory bowel disease.

“I feel a great sense of personal loss at this tragic event,” said Kenneth Polonsky, dean of the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine and executive vice president for medical affairs at the University of Chicago. “Gary was a true role model for physician-scientists, deeply committed to scholarship, education and the care of patients with renal disease. He always conducted himself with the highest level of dignity and professionalism.”

Toback’s efforts to identify, purify and characterize various growth factors involved in wound healing, and later with kidney stone disease, led to multiple patents and the formation in 1995 of a biotechnology company, NephRx Corporation, based in Kalamazoo, Mich.

“He trained as a scientist and a clinician,” said Fredric Coe, professor of medicine and medical director of the University’s Kidney Stone Prevention Program, “and focused on cell biology, in this case how individual cells respond to an injury. In the process, he discovered a molecule, antrum mucosal protein-18, which is of considerable importance for cell repair.”

He was also “passionate about both scientific enquiry and the rights and protection of patients participating in clinical research,” said Arlene Chapman, section chief of nephrology and director of the Clinical Research Center for the University of Chicago’s Institute for Translational Medicine. As the research subject advocate for the ITM, Toback “tirelessly ensured participants’ best interests were taken into account when enrolled in clinical trials,” she said.

“Gary Toback was a quadruple threat,” said Jonathan Moss, professor of anesthesiology. “He was a superb clinician, an outstanding researcher, a gifted teacher and a successful administrator.”

Colleagues also remember Toback as a remarkably friendly, kind, level-headed and well-liked professor, readily available to faculty and students, and consistently able to provide solid, sensible advice.

“Gary was a mensch,” said geneticist Graeme Bell, the Kovler Family Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine. Everyone liked him. Talking with him was valuable because he was widely respected in his field, always saw the big picture and could fill in the details, as needed, with pure common sense.”

“He was a superb listener,” said Marshall Lindheimer, professor emeritus of medicine and obstetrics and gynecology, who helped recruit Toback to UChicago. “He was open and engaging. He had a talent for paying attention. He could focus intently on whoever was speaking as if they were saying something profound—even if it was mostly malarkey.”

“Gary was a quiet soul,” Coe added, “a lovely, warm, gracious, considerate man. He was always a good person to have in the room.”

Four decades at UChicago

Frederick Gary Toback was born Oct. 23, 1941, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He graduated cum laude in biochemistry from Columbia University in 1963. He completed his medical training at the New York University School of Medicine in 1967, followed by residency at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, part of the Case Western Reserve system. After serving for a year in the United States Navy Medical Corps, he returned to school to earn his PhD in biochemistry at Boston University, followed by a clinical nephrology fellowship at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

He came to the University of Chicago in 1974 as an assistant professor of medicine and—except for one sabbatical year at the Salk Institute in San Diego, where he studied the importance of sodium ions in epithelial cell growth—stayed for the rest of his career. He was promoted to associate professor in 1980 and professor in 1985. He served as interim section chief for nephrology from late 2008 to 2015. He published 100 research papers during his 42 years at the University of Chicago and lectured at distinguished universities throughout the United States and Europe.

Toback took on dozens of administrative and committee roles, within the University and on the national level. He participated in four internal search committees for department chairmen and three department reviews and was a member or chair of multiple grant review committees at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Toback was honored nationally by election to the Association of American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He was a fellow of the American Heart Association’s Council on the Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease. He was an active member of the National Kidney Foundation and the American Society of Nephrology.

The University’s Biological Sciences Division honored him last year with a symposium about the biology of kidney disease and its treatment.

He was also devoted to his family. He married his childhood friend Phyllis Brooks in 1963. They raised three children—David Andrew Toback, Alison Rachel and Jonathan Daniel—and have seven grandchildren.

A memorial service at the University of Chicago will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the Gary Toback Research Fund, in care of the Medical Center Development Office, 773-702-6565 or GivetoMedicine@bsd.uchicago.edu.

William H. McNeill, world historian and distinguished scholar, 1917-2016

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 14:00 -0500

Prof. William H. McNeill, a pioneer in the field of world history and author of the seminal work The Rise of the West, died July 8. He was 98.

McNeill, AB’38, AM’39, was a teacher and scholar for four decades at the University of Chicago. The Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in History, he was the author of more than 20 books, from the sweeping history of human disease Plagues and Peoples to a memoir of the University during the presidency of Robert Hutchins.

McNeill was awarded the Erasmus Prize in 1996 and National Humanities Medal by President Obama in 2010. The Rise of the West, which traces civilizations through 5,000 years of recorded history, received the National Book Award for history and biography in 1964.

In a 1987 interview at the time of his retirement, McNeill said it was important for historians not to be too narrow in their outlook. “History has to look at the whole world,” he said. “And that means you have to know how the rest of the world is, how it got to be the way it is.”

McNeill was critical in launching the field of world history at a time when the discipline was narrowly focused on the history of Europe and its past and present colonies. In his work, he emphasized the connections and exchanges between civilizations rather than placing them in a vacuum.

“Bill McNeill was a scholar of extraordinary boldness, range and high creativity,” said John W. Boyer, the Martin A. Ryerson Professor in History and dean of the College. “He was able to see patterns and relationships among highly complex and disparate historical phenomena on a global level in ways that enabled him to write magnificent and courageous books of large intellectual compass.”

Boyer said McNeill provided decisive leadership during his chairmanship of the Department of History in the 1960s, rebuilding it into a preeminent site for international historical research after the department had lost much of its luster in the 1940s and ‘50s.

An early interest in history

McNeill was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. His father, John McNeill, was a historian of Christianity whose efforts to tell the story of faith through the connections among denominations inspired his son.

McNeill arrived at the University of Chicago as a 10-year-old when his father was appointed to the University faculty. He graduated from the Laboratory Schools and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UChicago before attending Cornell to pursue a PhD in history.

McNeill’s studies were interrupted by his service in World War II, which included an assignment as assistant military attaché in Cairo. The position led to his working with Greek and Yugoslav governments in exile, making him an eyewitness to the middle stages of the Greek civil war. He wrote his first book from that experience, The Greek Dilemma: War and Aftermath, published in 1947.

In Cairo he met his future wife, Elizabeth Darbishire, who worked for the Office of War Information. She became his proofreader, critic and collaborator. They had four children together.

After the war, he completed his PhD at Cornell, and in 1947, he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago.

While in graduate school, McNeill stumbled across Arnold Toynbee’s The Study of History, which was an attempt to chart the rise and fall of world civilizations. Although he later worked under Toynbee at Chatham House in London, McNeill broke with Toynbee in his own work, seeing an interconnectedness among societies that didn’t exist in Toynbee’s writings.

A love of teaching and UChicago

At the University of Chicago, McNeill devoted himself to teaching in addition to his research. “Teaching is the most wonderful way to learn things,” he said in an interview. “You have to get up before a class at 10 o’clock the next morning and have something to say.” In 1983, he received the University’s Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

McNeill helped design the History of Western Civilization Core sequence at the University in the late 1940s and played a major role in introducing the history of other world civilizations as key elements of the College’s curriculum in the 1950s and ‘60s. He had a deep love and respect for the University and its intellectual community, dedicating The Rise of the West to “the community of scholars constituting the University of Chicago.”

“My father loved the University of Chicago wholeheartedly, its traditions and its people. A good-natured argument was his favorite form of entertainment, and he felt his colleagues and students at the University provided that in full measure,” said his son John McNeill, a professor of history at Georgetown University.

After his retirement, McNeill and his wife moved to Connecticut, where he continued to write. He completed a biography of Toynbee in 1989 and wrote The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History with John McNeill, published in 2003. In 2005, he published The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian’s Memoir.

In an essay for the American Historical Association, McNeill explained the importance of studying history. “Ignorance of history—that is, absent or defective collective memory—does deprive us of the best available guide for public action, especially in encounters with outsiders, whether the outsiders are another nation, another civilization or some special group within national borders.”

McNeill is survived by his four children and 11 grandchildren.