Irving Singer, a professor emeritus of philosophy at MIT, died Feb. 1 at age 89. Singer was an eminent philosopher whose academic career spanned 65 years — with more than half a century as a professor at MIT. 

Singer was the author of 21 books in the field of humanistic philosophy, focusing on topics such as the philosophy of love, the nature of creativity, moral issues, aesthetics, and philosophy in literature, music, and film. His works have been translated into Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish, among other languages. 

The MIT Press recently honored Singer’s career by initiating “The Irving Singer Library,” which includes republication of his books including "The Nature of Love," volumes 1, 2, and 3, and "Meaning in Life," volumes 1, 2, and 3; "Cinematic Mythmaking: Philosophy in Film"; "Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on his Creativity"; "Mozart and Beethoven: The Concept of Love in Their Operas"; and "Modes of Creativity: Philosophical Perspectives." Other books by Singer include "George Santayana, Literary Philosopher"; and "Santayana’s Aesthetics: A Critical Analysis." A manuscript in progress at the time of Singer’s death was titled “Creativity in the Brain.”

A three-day conference in 1991 focusing on Singer’s work generated a book titled "The Nature and Pursuit of Love: The Philosophy of Irving Singer," edited by David Goicoechea (Prometheus Books, 1995).  

Jack Ruina, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1963 to 1997 and emeritus thereafter, died on Feb. 4 at the age of 91.

Emigrating from Poland in 1926 at age three and a half, Jack Ruina grew up, as the youngest of nine children, in Brooklyn, New York, eventually attending the City College of New York. Following receipt of his PhD degree in electrical engineering from the Poytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1948, Ruina joined the faculty at Brown University. As his interests in defense-related areas increased, Ruina joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1953. While on leave from the University of Illinois, Ruina served in several senior positions at the Department of Defense’s radar division in the Control Systems Laboratory and as Director of Defense Research and Engineering in the Air Force and Assistant Director for Air Defense. 

For nearly three years, starting in 1961, Jack Ruina was the director of Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA, now called DARPA, in the Defense Department under President John F. Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Some projects under Ruina’s supervision at the time included development of technologies for seismic detection of nuclear tests, contributing to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963; research on missile-defense systems and radar; and hiring J.C.R. Licklider in creating the project that would become ARPANET, one of three early progenitors of the global Internet. 

Also from 1961 to 1963 under Ruina’s direction, ARPA funded the Arecibo Observatory, a huge radio telescope in Puerto Rico, and sponsored JASON, an independent group of scientists to advise the government on science-related policy issues. For his work as director of ARPA, Ruina received in 1962 the Flemming Award for One of Ten Outstanding Young Men in Government. 

Jack Ruina joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at MIT in 1963. In 1964 he was granted a leave to accept the presidency of the Institute for Defense Analysis, a non-profit research institution sponsored by a consortium of 12 universities including MIT.  

Along with several MIT figures including Jerome Wiesner, Ruina was involved in the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a series of conferences between U.S. and Soviet scientists intended to advance arms-control negotiations between the two countries. As noted in an MIT News article about Pugwash on the occasion of being selected for the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize, Ruina is noted for “making the initial and very controversial proposal for an ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty at a Pugwash conference.”

Ultimately his idea helped to motivate the 1972 SALT I Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty — as noted by Cornell Professor Matthew Evangelista in his 2002 book, “Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to end the Cold War.”

From 1966 to 1970, Ruina served as vice president for special labs (Lincoln and Draper Laboratories). He was also instrumental in founding the MIT Defense and Arms Control Studies Program — now called the Security Studies Program— and he served as its first director. Ruina served on government committees including a presidential appointment to the General Advisory Committee from 1969 to 1977 and acted as senior consultant to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 1977 to 1980.  He was the editor — with Jeffrey Porro and Carl Kaysen — of the 1988 book “The Nuclear Age Reader.”

Jack Ruina was also a member of the board of directors of the MITRE Corporation.

On his death at Sunrise at Friendship Heights in Chevy Chase, Maryland, he is survived by his children, Ellen Ruina, of Washington, D.C.; Andy Ruina of Ithaca, New York; Rachel Ruina of Washington, D.C.; and seven grandchildren. His wife, Edith Elster Ruina, died in 2005.

A memorial ceremony for Jack Ruina will be held at 11 a.m. on March 28 in Building W20 (Stratton Student Center) in the third-floor Mezzanine Lounge. Those interested in attending should contact Andy Ruina at ruina@cornell.edu.

Gifts in memory of Ruina may be made to MIT for the Jack and Edith Ruina Fund for Private Music Lessons (account # 3179200) or the Ruina Nuclear Age Speaker Series Fund (account #3255710). Mailed checks should made payable to MIT; include the relevant account number; and mailed to Bonny Kellermann '72, Director of Memorial Gifts, Room W98-500, 600 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139. Please be sure to note that your gift is in memory of Jack Ruina.

Ellen Sico, a longtime employee of the MIT Travel department, died on Feb. 6 in Cambridge.

Sico joined MIT in 1975 and served the community as a member of MIT Travel until 2012.

She is survived by her children, Christopher and Vanessa Sico, grandchildren Olivia and Avery Sico, and siblings Robert, William, and Philip Wiercinski, as well as nieces and nephews.

A celebration of Ellen Sico’s life will be held at the Story Chapel in Mt. Auburn Cemetery at 575 Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Saturday, Feb. 14 from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., followed by a religious ceremony and committal. The Rogers Funeral Home in Cambridge is handling arrangements.

Erna Viterbi, a warm and gracious philanthropist who with her husband, Qualcomm co-founder Andrew ’56, SM ’57, gave generously to MIT and a variety of other institutions, died Feb. 17 in San Diego.

“In the long adventure of their lives together, Erna and Andrew were terrific partners — curious, generous, thoughtful, and creative in everything they did,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif says. “Erna brightened every encounter and enriched every conversation. It was a delight to know her, and I am deeply grateful for her friendship and for everything she did for MIT.”

At MIT, the Viterbis established endowed professorships and fellowships for graduate students in the departments of electrical engineering and computer science and biological engineering. Four faculty members and more than 40 students on campus have benefited directly from their generosity. Together with her husband, Viterbi has also given generously to undergraduate scholarships to help MIT maintain its need-blind admissions policy.

“We are deeply sorrowful for Erna’s passing,” says Douglas A. Lauffenburger, the Ford Professor of Bioengineering and head of the Department of Biological Engineering. “She had a magnificent spirit and was a wonderful partner with Andrew in their extraordinary support for the faculty and students of our MIT biological engineering program.”

“Andrew and Erna Viterbi have given us a tremendous opportunity to honor the very best faculty and graduate students,” adds Anantha P. Chandrakasan, the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “Their support also allows our faculty and students to explore new research directions that are perhaps not as easy to fund in other ways.”

Daniela Rus, one of three current Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professors at MIT, says the family’s support has helped her to explore new ideas at the intersection of communication, control, and computation. “Erna was always so warm. I am so grateful I had a chance to know her,” says Rus, who is also the director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

The Viterbis have also been involved in other aspects of MIT community life. For example, last November the two attended MIT Hillel’s “Leading Jewish Minds @ MIT” faculty luncheon program, at which Andrew Viterbi spoke about the evolution of technology over his career; the couple had the opportunity to interact with the many Viterbi scholars and fellows who attended the event. “Erna was such a gracious person,” remembers Rabbi Michelle H. Fisher, executive director of MIT Hillel, which the Viterbis have also helped to support. “At another event I attended with her, I remember how interested she was both in sharing her own story and in hearing mine.”

According to published accounts of her life, Erna Finci Viterbi was born in Sarajevo, a descendant of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain. In 1941, during World War II, the Finci family fled German-occupied Yugoslavia for the Italian-occupied zone from which they were deported and interned in the Parma region of Italy. In 1943, when the Nazis occupied Italy, the family was saved from deportation to extermination camps by the people of Gramignazzo di Sissa, the village where they had been interned. Other Italians helped them escape to Switzerland, where they waited out the war.

In 1950, the Finci family resettled in California, where Erna met Andrew Viterbi; the two were married in 1958. “She became his equal lifetime partner, sharing in all major decisions and she was usually by his side as he scribbled notes on communication theory at home or at family gatherings,” according to the Andrew J. and Erna Viterbi Family Archives at the University of Southern California.

Erna Viterbi is survived by her husband, Andrew; son, Alan; daughter, Audrey; and five grandchildren.

Professor Emeritus Stephan Chorover, a founding member of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, passed away on Friday, Feb. 20, at age 82. His more than 50 years at MIT were marked by a passion for social justice, innovation in educational practices, and a love of philosophical inquiry.

Chorover graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1950. He received his Bachelor of Science from City College of New York in 1955 and a PhD in neuropsychology from New York University in 1959. Trained as a physiological psychologist, his early research focused on learning and memory in animals, and interactions between the central nervous system, human behavior, and socioenvironmental contexts. While at MIT, he became increasingly interested in human systems in composite biological, psychological, and social terms.

He was a strong advocate against the misuse of psychology and neuroscience as means of sociopolitical control, which he explored in his book, "From Genesis to Genocide: The Meaning of Human Nature and the Power of Behavior Control." Chorover became an oft-cited opponent of the use of psychosurgery, especially as a treatment of violent prisoners and indigent populations. His interest in the social context of behavior control motivated his research focus on social psychology during later years.

Chorover's commitment to students began during the early days of his MIT career, where he was instrumental in creating the department's first academic programs. Over the years he taught and mentored thousands of undergraduate and graduate students. A proponent of collaborative learning in higher education, he built that perspective into his teaching at MIT, focusing on how human societies interrelate with environmental systems. Chorover sought to enhance his students’ understanding of the human and ecological implications of their scientific research. He retired in 1998 but continued teaching 9.70 (Social Psychology) and 9.68 (Affect: Aspects of Feelings) to MIT undergraduate students for an additional 15 years.

He served on several MIT committees tasked with improving the Institute's curriculum and student life, and in 1996 co-authored a study of the first-year experience at MIT with his 9.70 students. He also served for several years on the editorial board of the MIT faculty newsletter, and was a member of the Second Committee on Women Faculty in the School of Science.

He is survived by his beloved wife of 62 years, Bea, and three children: Nora (and partner Steve Cooley), Jon (and wife Gina Gargano), and Katya (and husband John Grandt); as well as four grandchildren, Talia, Nathan, Sarah, and Annaluna. 

A memorial will be held in the MIT Chapel on March 14 from 12:30-2:30 p.m.

Claude Brenner, former MIT Corporation member, former president of the MIT Alumni Association, and longtime member of the MIT community, died on Saturday, March 7, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 86.

Brenner was born in South Africa on July 7, 1928. As a boy in the late summer of 1939 — just 10 days before Adolf Hitler invaded Poland — Brenner and his mother moved to Chicago, where they ended up spending the next nine years.

During this time, Brenner was recruited to become a cast member of the popular radio show “Quiz Kids,” which featured a panel of precocious children answering trivia questions on the air. Known for his eloquence and a strong command of topics in aeronautics, Brenner was such a popular figure that he was asked to substitute for the radio show’s host on four occasions.

His role on “Quiz Kids” eventually helped Brenner secure admission to the Lake Forest Academy boarding school, from where he graduated in 1944 at age 15. He matriculated at MIT that fall and went on to earn an SB degree in 1947 and an MS in 1948, both from the Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering.

Upon completing his MIT education, Brenner returned briefly to South Africa before moving to the U.K. for a job with de Havilland Aircraft Company. But he soon came back to the United States, where he built a career consulting on topics from aircraft design and performance to nuclear warfare and defense electronics to laser systems and renewable energy. Brenner settled in Lexington, Massachusetts, where he lived with his family for 38 years.

Throughout his life, Brenner remained a committed MIT ambassador and community member. He served, for instance, as a member of the MIT Corporation and as president of the MIT Alumni Association. He was president of the Class of 1947 up until his death, and had also served on the Educational Council, the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT) and some 70-plus other MIT boards and committees.

In addition, Brenner remained involved in the activities of his former department; most recently, he helped in the planning of the AeroAstro centennial celebration at MIT this past fall. He was also very active in Jewish matters on campus as the MIT Hillel Board chairman and was a founding member of MIT Hillel Foundation.

For his efforts as a volunteer with the MIT Alumni Association, Brenner received the Bronze Beaver Award, the highest honor bestowed upon alumni volunteers by the Alumni Association. Brenner proudly wore his bronze beaver lapel pin whenever he came to the MIT campus.

A mentor and friend to many, Brenner took pleasure in spending time with his family, volunteering at MIT, solving English cryptics puzzles, patronizing the arts, attending lectures at the Boston Athenaeum, traveling, and cogitating over all things mathematical. He was an ardent New England sports fan, and was particularly passionate about the Red Sox and Patriots.

Brenner was well known for telling stories and jokes; he shared memorable moments of his life in oral histories recorded by the MIT Libraries in 2008 and 2009. He was also a fervent champion of recycling and energy conservation.

Brenner is survived by his companion of 14 years, Anne Lowell; son Paul T. Brenner; daughter Harriet P. Severino; grandchildren Taylor, Eric, Brock, and Alisand; and the children of his late sister Sheila Lang, David and Roberta.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Lake Forest Academy Fund-Claude Brenner Memorial, 1500 West Kennedy Road Lake Forest, Illinois 60045 or to MIT for the Claude W. Brenner Scholarship Fund or MIT Hillel, c/o Bonny Kellermann, 600 Memorial Drive, Room W98-500, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Norman B. Leventhal ’38 — a visionary developer and philanthropist at the center of Boston’s postwar revival, and a conscience of its civic life — died Sunday at age 97. Leventhal was a life member emeritus of the MIT Corporation, and a vital member of the Institute community throughout his decades as an alumnus.

As a co-founder of the firm that became the Beacon Companies, Leventhal was a driving force behind the construction of many of Boston’s signature buildings and public spaces, including Rowes Wharf, Center Plaza, the renovated South Station, the park at Post Office Square, and 75 State Street, among others.

Equipped with a keen eye for all angles of urban life, Leventhal was a strong advocate of public spaces and amenities for all city residents. He conceived of and built the park at Post Office Square — now named Norman B. Leventhal Park — while his firm also constructed thousands of units of affordable housing in the Boston area.

“We must constantly work to find ways to make the riches of Boston available to all of her citizens, not just the most fortunate among us,” Leventhal told the Boston Globe in 1997.

Leventhal was widely known as a tireless benefactor to a wide variety of institutions, including MIT, the Boston Public Library, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and many other institutions and causes.

“Norman was a marvel: bold, brilliant, a visionary in his industry and an incredible public citizen, but so humble, so charming, so interested to know you — so interested in everything,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif said. “We are tremendously grateful for his service and generosity to the Institute — and for the power of his wonderful example. I could not be prouder to say that Norman Leventhal was a graduate of MIT.”

Alan Leventhal, one of Norman Leventhal’s sons and a member of the MIT Corporation, said that the Institute had a profound influence on his father’s life.

“In his self-effacing way, until the day he died, Sunday, he believed that if not for MIT, he would not have had the success he had in his life,” Alan Leventhal said. Norman Leventhal, he added, emerged from the Great Depression determined to “improve the quality of life for citizens in the community,” and spent much of his life thereafter mindful of working for the public good. 

Building a life – and a legacy

Norman Bernard Leventhal was born Aug. 30, 1917, and grew up in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, the child of a Russian father and Lithuanian mother who had immigrated to the U.S. From a young age he was a superb student, and graduated from the prestigious Boston Latin School at age 15. Though admitted to Harvard University, Leventhal attended MIT partly because the Institute offered him a scholarship.

A civil engineering student as an undergraduate, Leventhal worked three jobs while attending MIT. After graduating in 1938, he became a naval architect during World War II, and co-founded the Beacon Construction Co. in 1946 with his brother, Robert.

Leventhal married Muriel Guren in 1941. In an interview with MIT Technology Review published in 2008, he described his greatest accomplishment simply as “marrying Muriel.”   

Beacon Construction Co. grew significantly in the post-World War II years by tackling an array of projects across the U.S., from remodeling stores to building post offices and constructing public and military housing. The firm’s first large-scale project in Boston, one of which Leventhal remained especially proud, was Center Plaza, the long, curving office building in Boston’s Government Center, completed in 1969.

His work on South Station, as part of a public-private partnership, preserved the station’s striking neoclassical facade — a city landmark — while successfully rejuvenating the interior as a transit hub, public space, and setting for commerce. The renovated station opened in 1989.  

Norman B. Leventhal Park, in Post Office Square, was the culmination of a decade-long effort to construct a new green space in the middle of Boston’s financial district. Leventhal spearheaded a public-private partnership that demolished an old parking garage on the site, built a new one underground, and designed the nearly two-acre park, which opened in 1992. It was named for Leventhal in 1997. 

An inveterate walker who loved taking in the city on foot, Leventhal had one of Boston’s historic downtown walks named in his honor. The trail from Beacon Hill to Long Wharf was renamed the “Norman B. Leventhal Walk to the Sea” in 2008, dedicated by then-mayor Thomas Menino. 

Leventhal saw philanthropy as an integral part of his life. He supported Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, of which he was a longtime board member, and a variety of other causes, including the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston.

Among Leventhal’s most distinctive gifts was the establishment of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library. Leventhal produced a book, “Mapping Boston,” published in 1999 by the MIT Press, which displayed and detailed key elements of his unique collection of maps of the city.

Leventhal was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded honorary degrees from Boston University, Brandeis University, and Hebrew College. He was a director emeritus of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, an overseer of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and a trustee of Boston’s Museum of Science.

An institution at the Institute

Leventhal’s relationship with MIT remained strong and active during the three-quarters of a century he spent as an alumnus of the Institute. He served as president of the Alumni Association in 1977-78, and in 1978 was given the Bronze Beaver Award, the highest award granted by the Alumni Association for service to the Institute. He served on the MIT Corporation from 1975 to 2015, including service on the Executive Committee from 1990 to 1992.

The Leventhals also helped create the Muriel and Norman B. Leventhal Center for Jewish Life at MIT, a resource for MIT’s Jewish community and the campus as a whole.

In addition, Leventhal served on many visiting committees, which evaluate components of the Institute. He chaired the Architecture and Planning visiting committee from 1976 to 1988, working with the likes of architect Denise Scott Brown and the architectural critic Ada Louis Huxtable.

“He had a great interest in art and architecture,” said Alan Leventhal, noting that his father’s intellectual interests were well served by his committee work at MIT. “He had an enthusiasm that never left him.”

In 1989, the Leventhals established the Norman B. (1938) and Muriel Leventhal Fund to support a professorship in the School of Architecture and Planning in the field of city-building and large-scale urban environments. Intellectually, Leventhal’s interest in maps and urban geography also put him on common ground with some of MIT’s most influential faculty in architecture and planning, who had created innovative studies of our visual perceptions of cities and urban spaces.

Leventhal also served on the visiting committee for Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences from 1992 to 1999; the visiting committee for Architecture from 1999 to 2015; the visiting committee for Civil and Environmental Engineering from 1968 to 1974 and from 1998 to 2015; and the visiting committee for Urban Studies and Planning from 1992 to 2015.

“Norman was passionate about Boston as a city, about making it a better place for everyone else,” said Adèle Naudé Santos, who got to know Leventhal while serving as dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning from 2004-2014. She added: “He really cared about good urban planning, and the quality of our urban environment.”

Additionally, he was a member of the MIT Corporation’s Development Committee from 1970 to 2015 (serving in an honorary capacity after 1990); the Investment Committee from 1988 to 1992; and the Membership Committee from 1985 to 1990.

Fellowships for doctoral candidates from underrepresented minority groups, in the sciences and engineering, were also named in honor of Leventhal by outside donors.

Leventhal is survived by his wife, Muriel; his sons, Alan and Mark; his daughter, Paula Sidman; 11 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held in Kresge Auditorium on Wednesday, April 22, from 10:30 a.m. to noon, with a luncheon immediately following in the Johnson Athletics Center.

Professor Emeritus Benjamin Lax of the MIT Department of Physics passed away on April 21 at the age of 99.

Born December 29, 1915, in Miskolc, Hungary, Lax came to New York City as a boy and received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Cooper Union in 1941.

During World War II, Lax enlisted in the U.S. Army, where, after completing officer candidate school and other training, he was assigned to the radar laboratory at MIT. While there, he was in charge of putting together a new radar system, dubbed “Little Abner,” for field testing. After the end of the war, he pursued a PhD degree in plasma physics at MIT, receiving his degree in 1949.

He joined the MIT Lincoln Laboratories in 1951, later becoming head of the solid-state physics division in 1958, and associate director of the laboratory in 1964.

While at Lincoln Laboratory he made major contributions to the understanding of semiconductors, particularly through studies of their energy band structure using cyclotron resonance. He was also a co-inventor on an early patent for a semiconductor laser. His pioneering work on semiconductors provided an important foundation for the development of semiconductor technology now used in computers, cell phones, and other high-technology devices.

In the late 1950s, while working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lax led a group of scientists and engineers who proposed a high magnetic field laboratory on the MIT campus for research in solid-state physics, plasma physics, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and engineering. The proposal was accepted, the National Magnet Laboratory (NML) was established in 1960, and Lax served as its director for its first 21 years. He also became a professor in the MIT Department of Physics.

With Lax at the helm, the NML was an international leader in a remarkably wide range of research areas including the physics of solids in high magnetic fields; high magnetic-field nuclear magnetic resonance: studies of magnetic fields of the brain; and the use of high magnetic fields for plasma physics and magnetic-confinement fusion research. The first high magnetic field tokamak confinement device, Alcator, was constructed and operated at the NML; the results obtained were a major advance in nuclear fusion research. Eventually, the research on plasma physics and fusion energy required a larger facility, leading to the establishment of the MIT Plasma Fusion Center.

Lax was also active in teaching and training PhD students. He was a mentor to many young research scientists who gained valuable experience conducting research at the NML and went on to become international leaders in the fields of solid-state and plasma physics. He retired from the directorship of the NML — by then the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory and today the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory — in 1981 and from the physics faculty in 1986.

Among the honors and awards that he received were the Oliver E. Buckley Prize for condensed matter physics of the American Physical Society in 1960 and election to the National Academy of Sciences. He was the author of over 300 journal articles, and co-author of a classic book on microwave ferrites and ferromagnetics.

Following his retirement from the Magnet Laboratory and the physics faculty, he stayed active in physics for more the 15 years, including being a consultant at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Lax, who had lived in Newton, Massachusetts, was the husband of the late Blossom Cohen Lax, the father of Daniel R. Lax of Atlanta, and Robert M. Lax of Newton, and the grandfather of Rachael Lax Day.

Alexander Rich, an MIT biophysicist best known for his work on the structural biology of RNA and DNA, died Monday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was 90.

Rich, the William Thompson Sedgwick Professor in MIT’s Department of Biology, continued coming in to his office until two months ago, when he was admitted to the hospital.

A pre-eminent researcher in structural molecular biology — a field that seeks to understand the molecular architecture of living organisms — Rich made major contributions to understanding the relationships between the structures and functions of RNA and DNA molecules.

James Watson and Francis Crick first described the right-handed, double helical structure of DNA in 1953. In 1979, Rich led a team of MIT researchers who startled the world of structural biology with the announcement that they had found a “left-handed” form of DNA. The new form, coiled in the shape of a left-handed screw, was called Z-DNA because of its zigzag backbone, but its significance remained a mystery for many years.

“After the initial discovery, many labs set out to understand the biology of Z-DNA, which turned out to be a much more difficult endeavor than discovering the structure in the first place,” says Thomas Schwartz, an associate professor of biology at MIT who was a PhD student of Rich’s and helped decipher the function of Z-DNA. “While we still do not fully understand its biological role, the work on Z-DNA emphasized perhaps more than any other single piece of data how important the three-dimensional conformation of DNA in the context of the cell is.”

In 1995, researchers led by Rich reported the first biological role for left-handed Z-DNA and detailed the identification of a protein that binds tightly to Z-DNA. The protein has long been recognized as an “editor” that can change the genetic message of RNA. Its affinity for Z-DNA may help it find genes that are producing the messenger RNA that it edits.

Deciphering biological structures

Rich’s pioneering work started in 1955 when, together with a colleague, he deduced the three-dimensional, triple helical structure of collagen, the major fibrous protein of skin and connective tissue.

One year later, as a section chief in physical chemistry at the National Institutes of Health, he and a colleague discovered that two single-stranded nucleic acid molecules could spontaneously and specifically combine to form a double helix. This was the first hybridization reaction, a reaction that in various forms became a major technique in the development of molecular biology. In 1957, his group discovered that nucleic acids could form triple helices, a finding widely used in biotechnology today.

At MIT in 1960, Rich discovered that an RNA strand and a DNA strand could form a double helix, which helped explain how cells copy DNA into messenger RNA.

He led student researchers in 1962 to the discovery of polysomes, the clusters of protein synthesis machinery held together by a messenger RNA molecule. These are the functional units used by cells to translate genetic information into proteins.

Born in Hartford, Conn., in 1924, Rich served with the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946. He received a bachelor’s in biochemical sciences from Harvard University in 1947, and graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1949.

From 1949 to 1954 he was a research fellow in chemistry with Linus Pauling at Gates and Crellin Laboratories at Caltech. He served as chief of the section on physical chemistry at the National Institute of Mental Health from 1954 to 1958, and was a visiting scientist at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, from 1955 to 1956. From 1969 to 1980, Rich was an investigator in NASA’s Viking mission to Mars, working on experiments designed to look for life on that planet.

He joined the MIT faculty in 1958, and mentored generations of students.

“Alex was a bright beacon and a good mentor,” says Shuguang Zhang, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms who worked closely with Rich. “The most important thing Alex taught us is open-mindedness. Open-mindedness opened a new world for each one of us.”

“Alex was an inspirational scientist,” Schwartz adds. “Always keen on solving the next scientific puzzle, always keen on figuring out the latest technology to move forward. His curiosity was second to none.”

High honors

In 1995, Rich received the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor bestowed by the U.S. government. His many other awards and honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Philosophical Society, the French Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Rich was also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and, in 1976, was appointed by President Gerald Ford to a six-year term on the U.S. National Science Board.

In 1980, Rich was presented with MIT’s James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, given for extraordinary professional accomplishments by faculty members. He won the $250,000 Bower Award for Achievement in Science in 2000, was presented with Sigma Xi’s William Procter Prize for Academic Achievement in 2001, and was awarded the Lomonosov Large Gold Medal from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2002. In 2008 he was named the 38th recipient of the $300,000 Welch Award in Chemistry.

He received several honorary degrees, as well as the Rosenstiel Award in Basic Biomedical Research and the Presidential Award of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Rich is survived by his wife, Jane; two sons, Josiah and Benjamin; two daughters, Jessica and Rebecca; and seven grandchildren: Abigail, Rachel, Abraham, Nola, Nicholas, Cyrus, and Zachary.

A memorial gathering will be held on Sunday, May 3, at the Norton Woods Conference Center, 200 Beacon St., Somerville, Mass., from 1-5 p.m.

Jane Farver, a renowned art curator and administrator and the former director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center, passed away suddenly on April 29. Farver was in Venice, Italy, acting as the editor for the catalog being produced to support the List’s presentation of new work by artist Joan Jonas for the U.S. Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, opening later this week.

Throughout the course of her distinguished 12-year tenure as director of the List (1999-2011), Farver contributed greatly to the vibrant life of the arts community on the MIT campus, in Boston and internationally. Her directorship was distinguished by the List’s presentation of internationally acclaimed contemporary art exhibitions and a remarkable increase in the commissioning of major public artworks throughout the campus. 

“On behalf of the entire List community, I would like to express my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Jane Farver,” said Paul Ha, director of the List Visual Arts Center. “Her impact in the contemporary art world is formidable and, and we will forever be thankful for her contribution. We mourn the sudden loss of our dear friend and colleague and are incredibly grateful for all that Jane gave to our community during her long and distinguished career.”

During her time at the List, Farver collaborated with a diverse range of artists and organized groundbreaking exhibitions, including solo exhibitions and projects by Mel Chin, Michael Joo, Paul Pfeiffer, Runa Islam, Kimsooja, John Coplans, Adel Abdessemed, and Tavares Strachan. She also organized a number of group exhibitions, often with colleagues at MIT and other leading cultural institutions, including the landmark exhibition, "Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s," and "Sensorium: Parts I & 2 – Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art." She assembled a dedicated staff of museum professionals at the List and also brought in distinguished outside curators and exhibitions, such as "Cameron Jamie," organized by Philippe Vergne of the Walker Art Center, and "Y E S Yoko Ono," organized by Alexandra Munroe with Fluxus scholar Jon Hendricks.

Philip S. Khoury, MIT associate provost and the Ford International Professor of History, said, “On behalf of MIT, we share our condolences with Jane’s family and friends. As Jane’s longtime colleagues and friends, we mourn the loss of a stalwart advocate for the arts and will forever be grateful for all that she contributed to the MIT community.”

Under her leadership, the List organized presentations for two international art biennials, including artist Paul Pfeiffer’s project as the U.S. representative for the 9th Cairo Biennial in 2003, an exhibition that traveled to Athens for the 2004 Olympic Games, and artist Fred Wilson’s exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion of the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, on which Kathleen Goncharov was the commissioner. Farver also served as one of six curators to organize the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2000 Biennial.

In addition to organizing major exhibitions at the List and around the world, Farver oversaw MIT’s celebrated Percent-for-Art program, which under her stewardship added more than 10 major works to the campus, such as Cai Guo-Qiang’s "Ring Stone" (2010) outside of the Sloan School building; Anish Kapoor’s "Non-Object (Plane)" (2010), a mirrored, stainless-steel work inside the Frank Gehry-designated Stata Center; Sol LeWitt’s "Bars of Colors within Squares (MIT)" (2007), a vibrantly colored floor for the 5,500 square foot U-shaped atrium of the Green Center for Physics (Building 6C); and Sarah Sze’s "Blue Poles" (2006) running up the façade of the Sidney Pacific Graduate Dormitory. Farver also revitalized the List’s artist residency program, offering artists the opportunity to work with MIT’s remarkable students, faculty, and staff. Through the residency program, several artists each year, including Cai Guo-Qiang, Tavares Strachan, Adel Abdessemed, and Matthew Day Jackson, came to campus to seek new insights and push the boundaries of their practices.

Following her retirement from the List in 2011, Farver returned to New York and worked as an independent curator, recently serving as a consulting director for U.S. Biennial, Inc., the organization that funds the Prospect triennial in New Orleans. She was also a visiting critic at Cornell University’s AAP NYC program and was consulting on the creation of a new art program at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Farver was enlisted to edit the catalogue for artist Joan Jonas’s upcoming exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion, titled "They Come to Us without A Word" by Paul Ha.

Before coming to the List, Farver served as the director of exhibitions at the Queens Museum of Art in New York (1992-1999); director of Lehman College Art Gallery at the City University of New York (1989-1992); director of the Tomoko Liguori Gallery (1987-89); and director/curator at the Alternative Museum (1985-87). Before moving to New York in 1985, Farver was director of Spaces Gallery in Cleveland and was a photo librarian at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Farver is survived by her husband John L. Moore, her brother Richard Farver of Corry, Pennsylvania; her sister Mary Terry of Seattle, Washington; as well as extended family including stepchildren, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren.

Plans for a memorial service are forthcoming.

Judith Layzer, a professor at MIT and an accomplished scholar who produced influential work on environmental policy and politics, died Thursday after an extended illness. She was 53.

Layzer had been on the faculty of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) since 2003, and had served as associate head of the department since 2014.

Layzer’s research explored the politics of environmental policies, and the role of science in shaping public debate on these matters. Scientific evidence, as she detailed in many of her writings, provides a powerful foundation for environmental advocacy — but policies do not always simply follow from that science, she noted, since disputes over the environment are often contested between groups with differing or opposing values. In this context, Layzer concluded, the quality of environmental advocacy matters greatly.

For instance, those combating climate change — a position Layzer supported publicly — needed a “politically compelling story” to gain more support, as she wrote in a Boston Review article in 2012.

“You have to fight ideas with ideas,” Layzer added in a 2013 interview with MIT News.

Within the field of environmental policy and politics, Layzer’s work ranged widely across topics, including clean air and clean water regulations, land protection, species conservation, and climate change. She had also become increasingly focused on issues of urban sustainability, including studies of food systems.

Layzer wrote three books and published numerous articles, among other scholarly accomplishments, while teaching highly regarded classes to MIT undergraduates and graduate students.

Layzer’s colleagues remember her as a person driven by a strong sense of ethics and possessing exceptional intellectual qualities.

“Besides being a brilliant scholar and exceptional writer, Judy was also a dedicated — and demanding — teacher,” says Professor Eran Ben-Joseph, head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. “She was an inspiration and a role model precisely because she expected the best from her students, her colleagues, and herself. She was tough, but always fair; stern, but always caring.”

Ben-Joseph adds: “Judy was motivated by intellectual curiosity and a zest for academic inquiry, but more importantly she was driven by an underlying sense of ethics and a core belief that we would be wrong — period, no qualifiers — to destroy the planet and its natural systems. She was a true friend who would often make you laugh and a scientist who would always make you think. She was a person of genuine integrity who will be sorely missed.”

Influential work, popular teaching

Layzer received her undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Michigan in 1983, and her PhD in 1999 from MIT’s Department of Political Science. Her doctoral thesis, “Sense and Credibility,” examined a series of environmental-protection disputes, ranging from the controversy over acid rain to restoration of the Florida Everglades.

In her work, Layzer detailed how science is a foundation for environmental advocacy, while noting that policy decisions are often settled by the relative strengths of the opposing coalitions. However, science-based advocacy, she asserted, can influence the strength of those opposing groups.

Her thesis research became part of her first book, “The Environmental Case: Translating Values into Policy” (CQ Press, 2002), an influential work now in its third edition; Layzer added considerable new material, on climate change and other topics, to the later editions.

Layzer’s second book, “Natural Experiments” (MIT Press, 2008), examined whether recent approaches to conservation across the U.S. have been effective; she concluded that some of these programs are less likely to produce environmental improvements than policies enacted through traditional top-down political means. 

In her 2012 book, “Open for Business” (MIT Press), Layzer examined how conservatives sometimes have succeeded in environmental debates by tapping into, among other things, public mistrust of regulation to argue for opening up federal lands for further development.

Layzer taught at Middlebury College from 1998 until 2003, when she rejoined MIT as an assistant professor in DUSP. She was promoted to associate professor in 2007, and to full professor in 2014; she also became head of MIT’s Environmental Policy and Planning Group in 2010. 

Layzer gave talks at academic and policy conferences both around the U.S. and internationally. Awards she received included the Lynton B. Caldwell Prize for best book in environmental politics and policy; the John C. Donovan Prize for Best Paper, awarded by the New England Political Science Association; the 2013 DUSP Graduate Student Council Advising Award; and the 2008 
MIT Graduate Student Council Teaching Award.

Layzer supervised or read dozens of master’s and PhD theses in DUSP, and taught a wide range of courses, including the popular course 11.002J (Making Public Policy), as well as others on science and politics, energy politics, ecosystem management, and food systems.

Outside the classroom, Layzer was known to friends (and competitors) as a world-class ultimate frisbee player. The Boston-based club team she played for, known as “Lady Godiva,” won the U.S. national championship seven times between 1995 and 2002, and won the world championship in 1998.

Layzer is survived by her parents, David and Jean Layzer, and by her four siblings: Carolyn, Emily, Nicholas, and Jonathan. Donations in her memory can be made to Grub Street to support an innovative, rigorous, and welcoming community for writers.

James A. (Jay) Fay, a professor emeritus in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, past away on Tuesday, June 2, of complications from lymphoma. He was 91.

The list of people who will miss him is large: His devoted family of six children and their spouses, 18 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, are the first to feel the loss. But close behind are the many professionals at MIT and a host of other institutions and causes that benefitted from his extraordinary personal talents.

Fay grew up in Brooklyn, New York, but spent his summers in Southold, New York, close to the waters of the Long Island Sound. This motivated his lifelong interest in sailing and led him to earn a BS at the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture in 1944, while an ensign with the U.S. Naval Reserve. Subsequently, he obtained an MS from MIT in marine engineering and a PhD from Cornell University in the unsteady propagation of gaseous detonation waves. After serving on the Cornell faculty from 1951 to 1955, he was recruited to join MIT as an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), where he remained until transitioning to emeritus professor status in 1989.

The hallmark of Fay’s success as an innovator and contributor was listening carefully and crystallizing the essence of a discussion. Having reached that point, he was committed to seeing a process through to the appropriate conclusion. This was true across the board, whether it was a decision to perform a “ready – about” in a sailing race or writing a definitive opinion on the ecological folly of extending the John F. Kennedy Airport runways into Jamaica Bay. His selection of research topics at MIT was geared to the common good: air and water pollution problems, acid rain, the safety hazards of liquefied gases, renewable energy, and the spread of oil and other hazardous liquids on the ocean. However, it was his early career work on combustion and detonation, hypersonic heat transfer, magnetohydrodynamics, and plasmadynamics that were the hallmarks of his election into the National Academy of Engineering in 1998. He continued to create new textbooks after his decision to become emeritus.

Fay’s great ability to synthesize solutions in difficult circumstances was amply demonstrated in his service to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as chairman from 1972 to 1977 of the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), the organization that controls Logan Airport, the Boston seaport, and several other Boston-area transportation facilities. Under Fay’s leadership, Massport transitioned into a sleeker, more environmentally-aware public-serving entity. In the words of Alan Altschuler, former secretary of transportation for the Commonwealth, “Jay’s combination of wisdom, deep knowledge, total integrity, and courage in the face of (unfair public) attacks through even the most stressful controversies was absolutely remarkable.” 

Fay played key roles in no fewer than 20 environmental organizations and panels that sought to develop public policy in a new world threatened with pollution and environmental hazards. This included 46 years of service as a director of the Union of Concerned Scientists seeking to ameliorate the threat of nuclear catastrophe. His reasoned and thoughtful scientific approach to these problems was critically important in building credibility for public examination of our approach to environmental threats.

The family has arranged a funeral mass at St. Julia Church at 374 Boston Post Road in Weston, Massachusetts, on Saturday, June 13, at 10 a.m. This will be followed by a celebration of his life at the Biagio Ristorante at 123 Moody Street in Waltham.

Alumnus and former professor Charles Correa MArch ’55 — described as “India’s greatest architect” — passed away on Tuesday at age 84. A visionary architect and urban planner, Correa built a substantial legacy through a wide range of projects in his native India and around the world, including MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Science Complex.

Over a six-decade career, Correa became a leading voice in the world of international architecture and an influential figure in post-war India. His buildings, known for an open style that embraced climate and made dramatic use of natural light and connection to the sky, “stand out in bland landscapes like an exclamation point,” The Times of India wrote.

Correa’s projects spanned museums, public buildings, commercial spaces, hotels, and residences. But he also wove urban development and low-income housing into a life defined by a strong sense of social purpose. "Just as there is writing and then there is literature, there is construction and then there is architecture. Great architecture can change society," Correa said.

“A strong voice for modern optimism, Charles brought the architectural output of the Indian subcontinent to the world’s attention. In turn, through his passionate advocacy for high-quality design from the scale of individual buildings to planning for entire cities, he influenced the global discourse well beyond the practice of architecture alone,” said Hashim Sarkis, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. “He was a remarkable thinker, designer, artist, and activist. We could not be more proud that he learned, taught, and built at MIT.”

A built legacy around the world and at MIT

Born in Secunderabad, India, in 1930, Correa attended the University of Michigan as an undergraduate. After graduation in 1953, he earned a Master’s degree in architecture from MIT in 1955 and returned to India to start his own practice.

Notable building projects include the Gandhi Memorial Museum in Ahmedabad, India, completed when he was just 28 years old; the State Assembly building for Madhya Pradesh in India; the Kanchanjunga Apartments in Mumbai, India; and the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Lisbon, Portugal.

At MIT, Correa was one of three alumni — along with Julian Beinart MArch ’56, who also taught at the Institute, and Roger Goldstein SB ’74 MArch ’76 — who designed the Brain and Cognitive Science Complex (Building 46), home to the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the Picower Institute, and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. For the project, the designers had to devise an elegant solution to bring the three distinct research organizations together under one roof, on an oddly shaped site divided in the middle by an active railway.

Correa also had a long relationship with the Aga Khan Foundation, stretching from his membership in 1977 on the steering committee that developed the Aga Khan Award for Architecture to one of Correa’s last building projects completed when he was 84 — the new Ismaili Centre, adjacent to the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada.

"A model of what an architect can and should be"

Correa also devoted considerable attention during his career to issues of urban development and low-income housing. In the late 1960s, at the invitation of the government of Peru and the United Nations, Correa helped with the design of a groundbreaking, experimental low-income housing community called PREVI, for Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda ("experimental housing project").

During the same period, he embarked on the preparation for a master plan for Navi Mumbai, India, one of the largest planned cities in the world, and served from 1971 to 1975 as the chief architect for the municipality’s development. He also later served as the chairman for the National Commission on Urbanisation for the Government of India. Correa captured his ideas on urban development in the Third World in "The New Landscape," a seminal book published in 1985.

This sustained attention to architecture, planning, and societal impact makes Correa an exemplary architect, said William Porter, who served as dean of the School of Architecture and Planning from 1971 to 1981. “Through long association and friendship I came to know how remarkable Charles Correa was, not only through his gorgeous and culturally meaningful buildings, but also through his deep commitments to equity and social justice and his inspiration of clients, colleagues, and students,” Porter said. “We have lost a truly wonderful and accomplished person, but we have gained a legacy of significant works and a model of what an architect should and can be.”

During his life, Correa was recognized with numerous awards, including the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects, which named him “India’s Greatest Architect” in 2013; the Chicago Architecture Award from the American Institute of Architects; the UIA Gold Medal from the Union of International Architects; and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Student, teacher, colleague, and friend

Correa maintained a lifelong connection with the Institute. After receiving his degree, he returned to MIT as a professor in 1962, and then intermittently but continuously taught and lectured at MIT for nearly 50 years.

“I had the privilege of counting him as a colleague and friend when he taught at MIT. The enormity of his intellectual range and curiosity set him apart and enabled him to engage deeply across all of MIT's learning cultures,” said Philip Khoury, associate provost for the arts and the Ford International Professor of History.

As a teacher, Correa cautioned against snuffing out students’ creativity in the process of educating them and emphasized the need for students to draw upon experienced faculty while developing independent judgment. “We do not know if architecture can be taught — but we know it can be learnt,” Correa wrote. “For learning is a process that depends on us ourselves, and our attitude of mind.”

Mujid S. Kazimi, the TEPCO Professor of Nuclear Engineering and one of the world’s foremost educators and researchers in nuclear technology, died suddenly on Wednesday in China.

Kazimi, who was 67, suffered a heart attack while visiting Harbin Engineering University to participate in an international advisory committee. He held faculty appointments in MIT’s Departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) and Department of Mechanical Engineering, and was director of both MIT’s Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems and the Kuwait-MIT Center for Natural Resources and the Environment. He served as NSE’s department head from 1989 to 1997.

Current NSE department head Richard Lester shared the news of Kazimi’s death in an email to the department’s faculty on Wednesday, describing it as “a devastating blow.”

“The international community knew Mujid as one of the world’s great nuclear engineers,” Lester told MIT News. “In NSE, we also knew him as a wonderful human being. Wise, kind, tough when he needed to be, but always gracious and respectful toward his students and his colleagues — he was a true gentleman, and he was a good man. His dedication and loyalty to his students, and to the department, were inspirational. It is a huge loss for our department, and for our field. But his colleagues in NSE are grateful for the privilege of knowing and serving with him.”

Kazimi was born in Jerusalem in 1947, and later moved with his family to Amman, Jordan. He earned his bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Alexandria University in Egypt in 1969, then came to MIT, where he earned an SM in 1971 and a PhD in 1973. Before joining the MIT faculty in 1976, Kazimi worked briefly at Westinghouse Electric Corp. and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Kazimi was an expert in the design and analysis of nuclear power plants and the nuclear fuel cycle. He supervised 45 PhD theses and 80 master’s theses at MIT; Lester notes that many of his students have gone on to faculty positions at universities worldwide, or to leadership positions in the nuclear energy field.

Kazimi was dedicated to the advancement of the profession, and advised governments, universities, and research institutions on the development of nuclear energy. He authored over 200 scientific papers, and co-authored, with Neil Todreas, a two-volume textbook, “Nuclear Systems.” 

Lester says that Kazimi’s contributions to the field included “numerous technological advances that promise to enhance the safety and economics of nuclear power plants.” Among his most important contributions are the development of annular fuel with internal and external cooling, offering the potential for dramatic reductions in the fuel operating temperature, thereby reducing the thermal energy stored in the fuel.

Kazimi also led efforts to develop a ceramic fuel cladding made of silicon carbide to replace the zirconium alloy cladding that is currently used in most reactor fuel. This new cladding, Lester says, “has the potential to reduce significantly the consequences of loss-of-coolant accidents in light water reactors,” because it greatly reduces the generation of potentially explosive hydrogen in such accidents.

Kazimi also made “a number of influential contributions to the development of technological strategies for the nuclear fuel cycle,” Lester says. “His research generated fundamental insights into the range of options for fuel-recycling technologies, enabling the sustainable development of nuclear energy along economically competitive paths that will take advantage of the abundance of natural uranium.” Kazimi co-chaired, with Ernest Moniz — the former MIT physicist who is now the U.S. Secretary of Energy — an influential, and widely read, interdisciplinary study on the future of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Kazimi received many honors for his work. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Nuclear Society and the International Nuclear Energy Academy, and recipient of the Kuwait Prize in Applied Sciences in 2011.

Kazimi served on many boards, including the board of trustees of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, a committee on the rejuvenation of scientific research in Kuwait, and the international advisory board on nuclear energy for the United Arab Emirates. He was a member of the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Energy, and at the time of his death was chairing its subcommittee on nuclear reactor technology.

Lester described Kazimi as “one of the world’s most distinguished educators and researchers in the field of nuclear technology. His outstanding scientific and engineering achievements are recognized around the world.”

Kazimi is survived by his wife of 41 years, Nazik Denny, by three children — daughter Yasmeen and sons Marwan (a 1996 MIT alumnus) and Omar — and by three grandchildren.

Frederic Richard “Rick” Morgenthaler ’55 (VI-A), SM ’56, PhD ’60, professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, died on June 21 at the age of 82. Morgenthaler was an accomplished researcher and educator, who spent his long career at MIT studying the theory and applications of electromagnetism.

Born on March 12, 1933, in Cleveland, Ohio, Morgenthaler trained as an electrical engineer at MIT, completing a BS, and then an MS in 1956. He began his research in the field of nonreciprocal microwave ferrite devices while serving in the United States Air Force from 1957-1959. He went on to continue his research in the area under the direction of Professor Lan Jen Chu in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), receiving his PhD in 1960. He joined the MIT faculty the same year. 

Morgenthaler led the Microwave and Quantum Magnetics Group in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), where his research focused on the theory underpinning the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and its numerous practical applications.

In the introduction to the 2011 textbook he authored on the subject, "The Power and Beauty of Electromagnetic Fields,"Morgenthaler wrote eloquently on the topic that was the focus of his research for nearly four decades at MIT.

He described the bronze plaque in MIT’s Eastman Laboratories (Building 6), inscribed with the mathematical symbols that represent Maxwell’s Equations. These simple equations, which predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves propagating at the speed of light, he explained, have made possible much of the technology we depend on today, from radio, to X-rays, to magnetic resonance imaging, to the Internet. “No one can doubt the utility — the power — of electromagnetic theory,” Morgenthaler wrote.  

A dedicated educator, Morgenthaler worked to equip MIT electrical engineering students with a deeper understanding of electromagnetism. He taught undergraduate electrical engineering core curriculum subjects in electromagnetic field theory, circuit theory, and semiconductor electronics. He also served as graduate officer for EECS from 1993 to 1996.

Morgenthaler was a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the author of over 100 scientific publications. He held the Cecil H. Green Professorship for 1984-1986. After his retirement in 1996, he continued to teach as a senior lecturer until 2000.

“Professor Morgenthaler greatly enriched MIT through his research, and his dedication to educating several generations of MIT electrical engineers,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, head of EECS and the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor in Electrical Engineering. “His colleagues at MIT and the numerous students that he mentored throughout his career will miss him greatly.” 

Morgenthaler, who lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts, is survived by his wife of 57 years, Barbara Pullen Morgenthaler; two daughters, Ann Rappaport SM ’88 of Wellesley and Janet Krolman; two sons-in-law, Carey Rappaport PhD ’87 and Arthur Krolman; and four grandchildren, Sarah and Brian Rappaport and Douglas and Tess Krolman. 

Louis Norberg Howard, emeritus professor of mathematics at MIT, and McKenzie emeritus professor at Florida State University, died on Sunday, June 28, at the age of 86.

Howard joined the MIT mathematics faculty in 1955 as an assistant professor, and was promoted to full professor in 1964. He retired from MIT in 1984.

Howard was an applied mathematician who worked primarily in the field of fluid dynamics. He made fundamental contributions to a broad range of subjects, including hydrodynamic stability and geophysical flows. He made a number of key advances in our understanding of turbulent convection, flows in Hele-Shaw cells, salt-finger zones, rotating flows, and reaction-diffusion equations. The power of his mathematical modeling was evident when he transformed qualitative ideas about the bounds on turbulent transport into rigorous mathematical arguments that initiated the field of upper-bound theory.

While his background was in physics and applied mathematics, he had an exceptional command of pure mathematics, as evidenced by his existence proofs concerning the hydrodynamic equations, and his elegant Semicircle Theorem. His mathematical powers were highlighted when he generalized and simplified extensive previous work on the Richardson number criterion for shear flows. He also had a practical side, and was no stranger to either the laboratory or oceanographic field work. His rare combination of physical intuition and analytic power gave his work its characteristic physical relevance, breadth, and depth.  

Howard was a scholar and a gentleman, beloved, admired and respected by all who knew him. He was a generous collaborator and mentor who shared his deep knowledge of fluid dynamics and applied mathematics with modesty and grace. He published widely with colleagues, postdocs, and students. He supervised nine PhDs at MIT, one at Princeton University, two at Florida State University, and he co-mentored several graduate students from other institutions. He continued his research long after retirement; his final paper is soon to appear in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. 

Howard was an inspiring teacher who taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate subjects at MIT. He was fundamental to the successful expansion of MIT’s graduate program in applied mathematics. His time at MIT coincided with the expansion of the physical applied math group, of which he was a central figure. After MIT, Howard joined the faculty at Florida State University (FSU) in 1981 as professor of mathematics and affiliate professor of mechanical engineering. His departure for FSU was a great loss to the MIT scientific community. In 1986, he was appointed to the FSU Foundation Professorship, and he retired from FSU in 1996. His recent passing has been a blow to the international fluid mechanics community, which recognized him as one of its leading lights.

Howard had developed a long-term association with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and was one of the original members of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (GFD) Summer Program in 1959, on whose steering committee he served from the early 1960s until 1984. Howard was the principal lecturer at GFD on several occasions, giving a series of advanced courses that helped establish the foundations of geophysical fluid dynamics. He supervised many GFD Fellows, and remained an active member of the WHOI GFD Summer School long after his retirement. Howard also built and maintained a cottage on Crooked Pond in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where he was a generous host to many.

Howard served as the representative of the American Mathematical Society on the U.S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from 1979 to 1982, and on its Science Policy Committee from 1983 to 1987. In 1983 he was a member of the Council of the Fluid Dynamics Division of the American Physical Society. He served on the advisory board of Dynamical Systems Group of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics from 1989 to 1991.

Howard was born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 12, 1929. He received his BA in physics from Swarthmore College in 1950, and his MA and PhD in mathematical physics from Princeton, in 1952 and 1953, respectively, under the supervision of Donald Spencer. He took an appointment as a Higgins lecturer in mathematics at Princeton in 1953, after which he became a research associate in mathematics and aeronautics at Caltech in 1955.

Howard was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965 and the American Physical Society in 1984, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1977. In 1997, he was honored with the prestigious Fluid Dynamics Prize of the American Physical Society.

Howard was married for almost 50 years to Alice G. S. Howard, with whom he had five children. They were divorced in 2000. Howard is survived by his ex-wife and four of his children, Astrid H. Howard, Emily A. Howard, Maxwell Carr-Howard and Holly H. Bjorklund.

Hamlin M. Jennings, adjunct professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and principal investigator in the Concrete Sustainability Hub, died on July 8 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after a battle with cancer. He was 68.

A prominent scientist and engineer, Jennings was widely recognized as a preeminent researcher and leader in the field of cement chemistry. He developed fundamentals of cement sciences that were transformational in concrete engineering applications, including the first fully quantitative model of the nanostructure of calcium silicate hydrate (C-S-H), the major component of hydrated cement.

Jennings joined the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub in 2010 as the inaugural executive director, leading a multi-disciplinary team of physicists, materials scientists, engineers and architects, and pushing them to new frontiers of science-based engineering.

When Jennings started his career in cement science in the late 1970s, the field was classically divided in two branches: cement chemistry and mechanics. Only a small number of researchers were exploring the intersection of chemistry, materials science, and mechanics. Trained as a physicist and materials scientist, Jennings recognized that a true materials science approach for cementitious materials remained to be developed. For the next 35 years, he led advances in the field, ultimately defining what is now known as the materials science of cement-based materials.

Jennings was born on August 4, 1946, in Massachusetts. His father was a professional accountant. His mother was a professor of chemistry at Wheaton College. He graduated with a BS in physics from Tufts University in 1969, and a PhD in materials science from Brown University in 1975. Following a research fellow position at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, he began studying cementitious materials at Imperial College in London, where he was strongly influenced by Hal F.W. Taylor, considered the father of modern cement chemistry.

Jennings joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the U.S. Department of Commerce as a physical scientist from 1982 to 1987, where he built a group in computational materials science of concrete aimed, for the first time, at blending physical chemistry of cement with prediction of mechanical behavior. During this time, he developed the first computer model of cement hydration. This groundbreaking work was quickly recognized by his contemporaries and it launched a whole new field of computational cement science, leading ultimately to the development of NIST’s Virtual Cement and Concrete Testing Laboratory.

Jennings joined Northwestern University as an associate professor in 1987, becoming a full professor in 1994 and serving as chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2002 to 2006. Jennings’ growing scientific reputation was instrumental in the establishment at Northwestern of the Advanced Cement-Based Materials Research Center, a National Science Foundation-sponsored multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary research center aimed at expanding and improving the application of cement and concrete to meet society’s pressing future needs for housing, shelter, hospitals, and infrastructure.

Jennings broke new ground in cement science in the mid-1980s with his proposition that the performance of concrete materials can be captured in terms of quasi-equilibrium phase diagrams of the hydration products. A decade later, this fundamental contribution enabled the development of ultra-high-performance concrete, which attains properties like mild steel, and which revolutionized the concrete world. In research, these phase diagrams became the foundation for the implementation of molecular science approaches of cement hydrates, the binding phase of concrete.

In 2000, Jennings published his most widely cited and influential paper, entitled simply “A model for the microstructure of calcium-silicate-hydrate in cement paste.” This was known for years as the “colloid model” of C-S-H, and more recently and appropriately, as the “Jennings model” of C-S-H. Hamlin continued to refine and extend the model and its associated insights into the nanostructure and behavior of C-S-H, particularly with regard to the role of water in the smallest pores and spaces. He published a major update to his model in 2008 called “CM-II” that described the internal structure of the fundamental C-S-H particles. He led a large group of researchers to publish, just one week before his death, an important paper on the hysteresis behavior of water in C-S-H during drying and rewetting.

The Jennings Colloid Model closed the loop between molecular understanding and manufacturing of cement-based materials so that it is now possible to design cement-based materials with specific strength, fracture and durability properties. These quantitative breakthroughs on the science front resulted in many industrial concrete materials innovations, including seeded cement-based materials, innovative cement-based materials for oil- and gas well applications, and silicate-based protective coatings for metals. 

Jennings’ most recent research efforts at MIT were aimed at developing sustainable cement-based materials to meet India’s need for housing and infrastructure. In this research, he returned to the very foundation of his unique thermodynamic framework for cementitious materials, at the intersection of materials science and mechanics as a basis for predicting and fine-tuning long-term durability properties.

Jennings, an entrepreneurial inventor who carried his research findings all the way from the lab to full commercial production, was also a highly sought consultant for the concrete and cement industry, the glass and fiberglass industry, and real-estate development. With his unique blend of science-inspired engineering, he proposed a new vision for cement-based materials in the 21st century — one that capitalizes on the availability of the raw materials and recognizes the social impact of the concrete on our living conditions while minimizing the environmental footprint.

Throughout his distinguished career, Jennings was dedicated educator, an inspiring instructor, and a generous and encouraging mentor. He left a lasting impact on his many students and colleagues; in the classroom, on the drawing tables and whiteboards in his offices at Northwestern University and MIT, and through the more than 200 scholarly papers he authored and co-authored.

Hamlin Jennings is survived by his wife, Glenys Jennings; his mother, Bojan Jennings; and his daughter, Ashley Jennings.

Régis M. N. Pelloux, professor emeritus of materials science and engineering, died July 10 after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. He was 83 years old.

Pelloux was born in Passy, France, in the Alps, and had a life-long love of the outdoors, which he shared with his family, friends, colleagues, and students. He was educated in France and then received a Jean Gaillard Fellowship to study at MIT, where he received an MS in 1956 and a PhD in 1958. After completing his doctorate, he enrolled in the French army, stationed at the French Army Atomic Research Centre. In 1961, he was hired by Boeing Scientific Research Laboratories to work on difficult assignments relating to turbine fracture. He joined the MIT faculty in 1968, in what is now the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

At MIT, Pelloux was a researcher and educator in what was the new and relatively small field of fatigue and fracture of engineering materials and structures. He worked closely with faculty in the departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Mechanical Engineering; consulted widely; and taught an unusually large course load. He was generous with his time and expertise, offering advice and a listening ear to junior faculty and graduate students and frequently collaborating with colleagues throughout the Institute, even offering his skills to the MIT Physical Plant Department when a large centrifugal refrigeration compressor failed in one of the main buildings. His students remember his big heart, his love of his adopted country, and his support for them and MIT. He retired in 1995.

Pelloux was a fellow of ASM International and the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, a recipient of the Albert Sauveur Award from ASM International, and an honorary member of the French Society of Metallurgy and Materials.

He is survived by his wife, Isabel; his son, Marc, and daughter-in-law Carolynn; and his daughter Babette and daughter-in-law Ronda.

All are invited to memorial service on October 8 at 2 p.m. in the MIT Chapel. A reception will follow.

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to MIT, in memory of Regis Pelloux for the DMSE Graduate Fellowship Fund (account 3122200).

Hartley Rogers, Jr., professor emeritus of mathematics at MIT, died at the Meadow Green Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Waltham, Massachusetts, on Friday, July 17. He was 89.

Rogers joined the MIT mathematics faculty in 1956 as an assistant professor, following a year’s visit at MIT. He was promoted to full professor in 1964, and retired from MIT in 2009.

Rogers’ research interests were in mathematical logic, and he is credited as one of the main developers of recursion theory, and of the usefulness and validity of informal methods in this area. His 1959 paper “Computing Degrees of Unsolvability” obtained semantical completeness results for higher levels of arithmetical complexity, and underlies current methodology in studies of computable structures. Rogers authored the 1967 book “Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability,” which has become a central and standard reference in the field, and remains in print.

Rogers served as vice president of the Association for Symbolic Logic, senior editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic, senior editor of Annals of Mathematical Logic, and associate editor of the Journal of Computer and Systems Sciences. Among his distinctions, Rogers received the Lewis R. Ford Award of the Mathematical Association of America for his expository papers in 1965.

Rogers’ career at MIT included significant administrative service during the 1960s and 1970s. From 1962 to 1964, he was a member of the Committee on Curriculum Content Planning, whose report radically modified the General Institute requirements for undergraduate education. In 1968, he chaired the Panel on November Events and the MIT Community, whose findings further developed the judicial processes of the Institute. Rogers served as chair of the MIT faculty from 1971 to 1973, and as associate provost from 1974 to 1980. He chaired the editorial board of the MIT Press from 1974 to 1981, as the press became an arm of the Institute’s educational mission.

At Rogers’ suggestion in 1996, the Department of Mathematics initiated its Summer Program in Undergraduate Research (SPUR). Teams pair a graduate student mentor with an MIT undergraduate; each team then works intensively on a research problem over a six-week summer period, culminating with the undergraduate giving a presentation and submitting written materials to a group of math faculty. Under Rogers’ direction through 2006, SPUR became popular with students who saw its educational benefits.

In 2001, the Rogers family established the Hartley Rogers, Jr. Prize for the top SPUR teams selected by the faculty. The prize has not only boosted the competitive spirit of its participants, but has attracted participation by graduate students from Harvard University and exchange students from Cambridge University.

From 1993 to 2006, Rogers supervised the MIT mathematics section of the Research Summer Institute program for advanced high school students. From 1995 to 2008, he also helped develop the MIT problem-solving seminar into an important resource for students, especially freshmen, interested in participating in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition. (Each year, he invited all attendees to his home in Winchester, Massachusetts, for dinner prior to the competition.) During this period, MIT’s Putnam team placed among the top three teams 10 times, twice in first place.

Rogers was a popular and respected teacher, particularly with his development of course 18.022 (Multivariable Calculus with Theory). In 1993, he received the Teaching Prize for Undergraduate Education from the School of Science. Rogers’ graduate lectures in mathematical logic were known for their beauty and clarity, and he was known for assigning challenging problem sets. He produced 19 doctoral students at MIT, with 557 mathematical “descendants” in total.

“[Rogers] presented an innovative, intuitive approach to recursion theory (computability) in his lectures and classic text,” says Richard Shore, a professor of mathematics at Cornell University and former president of the Association for Symbolic Logic, who studied with Rogers as a PhD student under Gerald Sacks from 1968 to 1972. “His approach was a major influence on my development and on all other students of the subject for the past 50 years. He was both a gentleman and a scholar who was devoted to his students, university, and academic community. For me, personally, he was a model and mentor for professional conduct and service to the community for many years.”

Along with mathematics, Rogers maintained a love for English literature, the field of his undergraduate degree. In the 1960s, he took up rowing with a passion. He was a founding member of the Charles River All Star Has-Beens (CRASH-B) sprints, and served as its unofficial guru for three decades. He won numerous medals at the CRASH-B sprints as well as at World Rowing Masters competitions, and in the Head of the Charles Regatta. He was the president of Boston Rowing Center, which prepared many top athletes for the U.S. national team, in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Hartley Rogers, Jr., was born in Buffalo, New York, on July 6, 1926. He received his BA in English from Yale University in 1946. Following a year at Cambridge University as a Henry Fellow, he returned to Yale to complete his MS in physics in 1950. He continued his studies at Princeton University in mathematics, receiving his MA in 1951 and his PhD in 1952, with Alonzo Church was his thesis advisor. Rogers’ first academic appointment was as Benjamin Peirce Lecturer at Harvard from 1952 to 1955.

Rogers was a devoted father, fiercely proud of his children and their accomplishments. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Adrianne E. Rogers; by his three children, Hartley R. Rogers, Campbell D.K. Rogers, and Caroline R. Broderick; and by 10 grandchildren.

Gifts in Rogers’ memory may be made to the Hartley Rogers Jr. Fund in the Department of Mathematics.

Frederic John Eppling, a physicist at MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science, died on July 16 of congestive heart failure at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts. He was 95.

Eppling was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on March 16, 1920. He was awarded BS (Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude), MS, and PhD degrees in physics from the University of Wisconsin. He distinguished himself academically by designing and building a mass spectrometer.

During World War II, Eppling was assigned to Harvard University's secret Radio Research Laboratory and helped to devise countermeasures against enemy radar. He also served with the U.S. Navy aboard the flagship USS Estes as lead radar officer during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After 30 years, he retired as a captain from active Naval Reserve duty. 

Eppling made significant contributions to particle, high-energy, and cosmic ray physics at MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science. He worked there for more than 60 years, first as associate director of the laboratory, and later as a staff physicist in the Electromagnetic Interactions Group, where he was head of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Administration and Communications Group. 

Among the groundbreaking research projects that Eppling worked on were the L3 Detector at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Experiment, which is deployed on the International Space Station. 

Eppling’s devotion to his family and profession and his desire to remain active and independent until his final days were an inspiration to all who knew him. Many will also remember him fondly as an ardent fan of the New England Patriots and Green Bay Packers football teams. 

Eppling’s wife, Sarah “Sally” Hennessey, whom he married in 1947 in Marblehead, Massachusetts, died in 1997. He is survived by his four children, John Eppling, Ann Eppling, Patricia Prior, and Michael Eppling, and Michael’s wife Susan. He is also survived by his grandchildren Emalie Prior and Brendan Prior. At the time of his passing, Eppling was a resident of Lincoln, Massachusetts, where he lived for 59 years.