Chemistry Professor Emeritus Klaus Biemann passed away peacefully on June 2 after a short illness. He was 89.

Born in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1926, Biemann studied chemistry at the University of Innsbruck where, in 1951, he received a PhD in organic chemistry under the tutelage of Professor Hermann Bretschneider. On completion of his doctoral studies, he remained at the university in the capacity of instructor until 1955. In 1954, however, he applied for and was accepted into a summer program at MIT for young European scientists and engineers. This Fulbright-backed fellowship enabled him to spend six months of that year in the Department of Chemistry at MIT before returning to Austria. Conversing with passengers on the ship to the U.S., he “figured out that MIT must be something special,” he later said. He had little knowledge of the Institute, but observed that travelers were highly impressed when they learned that it was his destination.

In 1955, Biemann returned to MIT to take up a postdoctoral position as a research assistant in the group of Professor George H. Büchi. His work in the Büchi lab centered on structural problems of natural products, and one of his major projects involved synthesis of muscopyridine for the purpose of proving a structure that Büchi had proposed on biogenetic grounds.  

In September of 1957, Biemann was appointed to a faculty position in the analytical division of the department by department head Arthur C. Cope. Despite his background in organic synthesis, Biemann centered his research program in analytical chemistry. The project Biemann set for his group was to explore the use of mass spectrometry in the determination of structure of organic compounds including peptides/proteins.

A serendipitous event had led Biemann into this area of research. Attending a 1956 Chicago conference on flavors and fragrances while still a research assistant with Büchi, Biemann learned of mass spectrometry from a paper presented by William H. Stahl of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps. Biemann saw how, coupled with his synthetic chemistry skills, mass spectrometry might be developed as a powerful tool in his proposed study of peptides. With encouragement and financial support from Cope, he purchased a Consolidated Electrodynamics Corporation 21–103C mass spectrometer in 1958 — at that time a workhorse in the petrochemical industry, and a very costly instrument. Cope later told Biemann that the money he had obtained from the MIT administration for Klaus' mass spectrometer was the best investment he [Cope] had ever made.    

“It was apparent to me,” says Department of Chemistry Professor Emeritus Fred Greene, recalling a conversation with Klaus a few years ago, “that Professor Cope's comment really pleased him. And, indeed, Cope's action made a huge difference to the field of mass spectrometry, to the department, and to Klaus."

"On a personal note,” Greene continues, “Klaus was such a gracious person. And a thoughtful person. It was a real gift to me to have had these interactions with him in our shared emeritus office, 18-297.”  

Six years later, Biemann’s graduate students and and postdocs began teaching themselves FORTRAN in order to design spectral interpretation algorithms. A 15-foot wide IBM 1800 computer quickly became a very important part of the Biemann laboratory. The groundwork for a new field in biochemistry — proteomics — had been laid.

“With Klaus Biemann’s passing, science has lost a true hero,” says Harry S. Hertz, former graduate student in the Biemann lab and director of the Baldridge Performance Excellence Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “When each of us joined Klaus’ research group, we quickly learned that we had joined something extraordinary. Klaus was a great mentor; he challenged us to imagine and ‘strongly encouraged’ us to deliver. It was a special time for each of us. We discovered the excitement of scientific research and the power of collaboration. We were truly a research group. But what made it even more special was Klaus, the person. He was a man who taught us about scientific integrity and brought the highest regard for each of us as a person to our interactions with him and each other. We achieved because we were in an environment of greatness, with Klaus as our guide.”

Ultimately, 150 graduate students and postdocs would benefit from Biemann’s tutelage and mentorship, and hundreds more are his professional progeny through the many of his direct descendents who undertook academic careers, largely inspired by his example and leadership. They represent the core of the worldwide mass spectrometry community.

“With his students and postdocs, Klaus was simultaneously formal, demanding, infallibly supportive, and an unfailing source of good humor,” says John Hayes, a former graduate student and scientist emeritus of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “He inspired do-or-die effort and respect that came from the heart as well as the mind. Among his many honors, this may be the greatest.”

Another graduate student from the Biemann lab, Ron Hites, distinguished professor at Indiana University, says the following about his PhD advisor: “Klaus taught all of us who passed through his research group how to do research and, more importantly, how to communicate our work — keep to a simple story and focus on the big picture. ... He was always supportive and courteous. I owe him a lot.”

Rising through the ranks, Biemann was appointed to assistant professor in 1959, associate professor in 1962, and full professor in 1963. Regarded as the father of organic mass spectrometry, his approach over the years enabled him to solve many problems in protein structure not amenable to existing methods.

Catherine Costello, the William F. Warren Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry at Boston University, who was a colleague of Biemann for more than 20 years at MIT, points out: “His impact on engaging scientists in adjacent fields to utilize mass spectrometry resulted from his constant outreach to other chemists, to biologists and to those in the medical professions, to identify areas of research where mass spectrometry could make a novel and unique contributions and to drive the development of mass spectrometry systems to accommodate those needs. He set up the first NIH Research Resource in 1966, to make these techniques available to the community and this center continued to lead technological developments and applications for 30 years.”

“The revolution in mass spectrometry that has made it one of the most important tools not only in chemistry but also in biology owes everything to the pioneering work of Klaus Biemann,” says Greg Petsko, the Gyula and Katica Tauber Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry Emeritus at Brandeis University and adjunct professor in the Department of Neurology and Center for Neurologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. “He made analytical chemistry, which had been relegated to a minor role as a servant of organic synthesis, once again a central part of the discipline. On a personal note, he was kind, generous, and constantly supportive of young scientists. A true gentleman scholar.”

Among the first entire proteins to be sequenced in this way by the Biemann group was the light-responsive protein bacteriorhodopsin, in collaboration with Professor H. Gobind Khorana, and an aminoacyl t-RNA synthetase enzyme important in the process of building up a protein one amino acid at a time.

In 1976, Biemann led a scientific team that sent a miniaturized mass spectrometer to Mars as part of the Viking Mission to look for organic compounds at the surface of the Red Planet. Mass spectrometry on lunar material returned by the Apollo missions had earlier been conducted in Biemann’s lab in the basement of Building 56. Biemann described his decades of participation in what is commonly called space research, beginning in 1963, as quite unrelated to his other organic and biochemical work. “However,” he stated in the Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry,“it required expertise in organic mass spectrometry, and I felt I should get involved.” He ironically described it as “scientific charity,” but also remarked it was an unforgettable experience. This he largely attributed to Viking’s unique team environment and the mutual appreciation that developed over the years of planning, and then being together at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory during the landed mission among the scientists of various disciplines, all working toward a common goal, the understanding of our neighboring planet.

“Klaus was a world-class scientist and inventor, a pioneer whose contributions highlight how technological innovation enables scientific advancement,” says Timothy Jamison, head of the Department of Chemistry, on learning of Biemann’s passing.

Biemann’s many awards and honors include the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry, the Thomson Medal from the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation (1991), the first Field and Franklin Award in Mass Spectrometry from the American Chemical Society (1986), the Fritz Pregl Medal of the Austrian Microchemical Society (1977), the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal from NASA (1977), and the Stas Medal of the Belgian Chemical Society (1962). He was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1993 and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966. He authored over 350 scientific publications and a book, "Mass Spectrometry: Organic Chemical Applications" (1962). The American Society of Mass Spectrometry annually recognizes an early-career scientist’s mass spectrometry achievements with the bestowal of the Biemann Medal.

Biemann and his wife Vera, who predeceased him in 2008, and their children Hans-Peter and Betsy, were faculty residents at McCormick Hall from 1967 to 1971.

Services will be private with immediate family. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to “Science Scholarship” and sent to Trustees of Trust Fund, P.O. Box 608, Alton, NH 03809. Biemann had a home in Alton and had established this fund for students of Prospect Mountain High School who are interested in embarking on a career in science.

George W. Rathjens, a professor emeritus of political science at MIT, died May 27 at age 90.

Trained as a chemist, Rathjens received his BS from Yale University and completed his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley. Rathjens is best known for his contributions to the theory and practice of nuclear arms control. He brought a fundamental understanding of the weapons and technologies to policy discussions and was a major participant in the controversial debate in the late 1960s and early 1970s on the wisdom of deploying ballistic missile defenses.

Prior to his arrival at MIT, Rathjens had a distinguished career in government, including service at the Institute for Defense Analyses, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, the Office of the President's Science Advisor, the Weapons Evaluation Group of the Department of Defense, and the Department of State.

Rathjens was one of the founders of MIT’s Security Studies Program — an internationally-recognized graduate-level research and educational program that integrates technical and political analysis of national and international security problems. His major policy interests were nuclear arms issues, environmental problems with special emphasis on conflict and the environment, and post-Cold War international security questions.

Among other achievements, Rathjens was from 1998 to 2002 the secretary general of Pugwash, the international non-governmental organization dedicated to cooperation among scientists and officials from many nations to bring "scientific insight and reason to bear" on the risks posed by nuclear weapons. For many years, he had been an active participant in that organization, which won the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize. He was also intensely interested in the principal international security problems of the 1990s — humanitarian intervention, sovereignty, and human rights — and under his leadership Pugwash took up these issues in a series of conferences.

Rathjens was active on a number of boards and committees, including the Aspen Strategy Group and the Massachusetts Commission on Nuclear Safety. He served as chair of the Council for a Livable World and the Federation of American Scientists and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. At MIT, Rathjens was held in deep affection by his graduate students and colleagues.

Born in Fairbanks, Alaska on June 28, 1925, Rathjens developed a great love of the outdoors from an early age. He was an avid hiker, and enjoyed skiing, bicycling, canoeing, and snorkeling. He was also an extremely active squash player, on the court almost every day at MIT, much feared because of his size and reach (though not always victorious). He was a member of the Sierra Club since 1949.

Rathjens was predeceased by his wife of 59 years, Lucy van Buttingha Wichers in 2009. He is survived by his three children, Jackie of Danville, California; Leslie of Washington, D.C.; and Peter of Sudbury, Massachusetts; as well as six grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Donations can be made in memory of George Rathjens to: Sierra Club Memorial, 2101 Webster St., Suite 1300, Oakland, CA 94612.

Arthur Freeman ’52 PhD ’56, the first associate director of MIT’s National Magnet Laboratory (NML), passed away on June 7, at the age of 86.

Born in Lublin, Poland, in 1930, Freeman arrived in the United States at the age of 7. He studied physics at MIT, both as undergraduate and graduate student, receiving his PhD in 1956 under the supervision of John Slater. After spending time teaching at Brandeis University and working at the U.S. Army Materials Research Agency in Watertown, Massachusetts, he returned to MIT in 1962 to join the newly formed National Magnet Laboratory (NML), which was under the direction of Benjamin Lax. Freeman arrived in time to see NML move from Building 4 to its current home on Albany Street, where he filled the newly created position of associate director. He was instrumental in bringing to the lab new physicists with backgrounds in superconductivity and magnetism, both theoretical and experimental.

Freeman was a solid-state theorist interested in the electronic and magnetic properties of rare-earth and other transition metals. He was well known among solid-state experimentalists for his work on hyperfine interactions in transition metals, organizing an international conference devoted to the topic in 1966.

In 1967 he left MIT to become chair of Northwestern University’s physics department, where he made major contributions to the field of computational physics and materials science. He was a pioneer in the development of first-principles quantum simulation methods for complex magnetic and superconducting materials, including their structural, electronic, magnetic, optical and mechanical properties.

In 1987 his research brought him to a meeting in New York City to discuss fast-breaking progress in superconductivity. A photograph of Freeman explaining the molecular structure of exciting new high-temperature superconducting materials was published on the front page of the New York Times. The meeting, which attracted thousands of physicists, became known as “the Woodstock of Physics.”

Freeman was honored to become the Morrison Professor of Computational Physics in 1992. He became emeritus in 2014, retiring to Brookline, Massachusetts.

The many awards and honors he received are a testament to the impact he made on his field. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in Physics, a Fulbright Fellow, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, as well as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and afellow of the American Physical Society. He received the first Medal of the Materials Research Society, and the first Magnetism Award of the International Union of Pure and Applied Research. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials.

Freeman is survived by his wife, Doris Caro Freeman; two of his four children, Seth Freeman and Sarah Packer; four grandchildren; two stepchildren, MIT Professor Jeffrey Grossman and Anne Grossman-Bernheimer; and six step-grandchildren.

Robert “Bob” Fano, a professor emeritus in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) whose work helped usher in the personal computing age, died in Naples, Florida on July 13. He was 98.

During his time on the faculty at MIT, Fano conducted research across multiple disciplines, including information theory, networks, electrical engineering and radar technologies. His work on “time-sharing” — systems that allow multiple people to use a computer at the same time — helped pave the way for the more widespread use of computers in society.

Much of his early work in information theory has directly impacted modern technologies. His research with Claude Shannon, for example, spurred data-compression techniques like Huffman coding that are used in today’s high-definition TVs and computer networks.

In 1961, Fano and Fernando Corbató, professor emeritus in EECS, developed the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), one of the earliest time-sharing systems. The success of CTSS helped convince MIT to launch Project MAC, a pivotal early center for computing research for which Fano served as its founding director. Project MAC has since dramatically expanded to become MIT’s largest interdepartmental research lab, the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

“Bob did pioneering work in computer science at a time when many people viewed the field as a curiosity rather than a rigorous academic discipline,” CSAIL Director Daniela Rus says. “None of our work here would have been possible without his passion, insight, and drive."

Fano was the Ford Professor of Engineering in EECS and a dedicated teacher who would often labor into the late hours of the morning, working on new lectures. He was also a member of multiple research labs at MIT, including the Laboratory for Computer Science, the Research Laboratory for Electronics, the MIT Radiation Laboratory, and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. He helped create MIT’s first official curriculum for computer science, which is now the most popular major at the Institute.

In many respects, Fano was one of the world’s first open-source advocates. He frequently described computing as a public utility that, like water or electricity, should be accessible to all. His writings in the 1960s often discussed computing’s place in society, and predated today’s debates about the ethical implications of technology.

“One must consider the security of a system that may hold in its mass memory detailed information on individuals and organizations,” he wrote in a 1966 paper he co-authored with Corbató. “How will access to the utility be controlled? Who will regulate its use?”

A native of Italy, Fano studied at the School of Engineering of Torino before moving to the United States in 1939. He earned both his bachelor’s degree (1941) and his doctorate (1947) from MIT in electrical engineering, and was a member of the MIT faculty from 1947 until 1984.

During World War II, Fano worked on microwave components at the MIT Radiation Laboratory and on radar technologies at the Lincoln Lab. He also served as associate head of EECS from 1971 to 1974.

Over the years, Fano won many notable awards, including the IEEE’s Educational Medal for teaching and the Claude E. Shannon Award for his work in information theory and microwave filters. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

He is survived by his daughters Paola Nisonger SM ’79, Linda Ryan SM ’82, and Carol Fano, as well as five grandchildren.

A memorial to celebrate his life will be held at MIT in September. In lieu of flowers, his family has asked that donations be made to EECS or a charity of the donor’s choice.

Judith Tendler, professor emerita in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), passed away on July 24 at the age of 77.

Tendler was a development economist with an institutional bent. Starting in 1984, she served as professor of political economy in DUSP's International Development Group.

She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan, followed by PhD work at Columbia University on a scholarship from the Ford Foundation. Before coming to MIT, she served as a program economist at the U.S. Agency for International Development, first in Rio de Janeiro and then at USAID's Latin America Bureau, carrying out various field evaluations. Following this work she carried out various field-evaluation research studies in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, South Africa, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Curaçao (Netherlands Antilles), and Egypt.

At MIT, Tendler ran five comparative research projects in Brazil that combined her field research with teaching, all funded by different Brazilian and international public agencies. These ventures led to various publications, dissertations, and theses. For this work, MIT awarded her two prizes in different years: the Irwin Sizer prize for “the most significant improvement in education at MIT,” and the Class of 1960 Award and Chair for “distinguished contributions to the instructional program and superbly innovative and effective work in educating graduate students under field conditions.”

“Judith was among the most innovative and heterodox development economists — and she was a real planner, because she always looked for ways to make incremental changes respecting organizational cultures," says Bish Sanyal, professor and former head of the department. "Her combination of knowledge of development economics and organizational theory had an optimistic outlook: When asked to advise so many governments she always looked first for something positive, then acknowledged the constraints facing the governments, and then proposed something as if those governments were already doing it. We have lost a brilliant mind and a dear friend.”

In addition to numerous articles and other works, she published three books: "Good Government in the Tropics,""Inside Foreign Aid," and "Electric Power in Brazil: Entrepreneurship in the Public Sector."

Tendler retired from MIT in 2011, and her work and career were celebrated in a widely attended academic festschrift. (To learn more about this special event, and to download many of Judith's writings, visit her festschrift page.)

A memorial to celebrate her life will be held at MIT this fall.

Seymour Papert, whose ideas and inventions transformed how millions of children around the world create and learn, died Sunday at his home in East Blue Hill, Maine. He was 88. 

Papert’s career traversed a trio of influential movements: child development, artificial intelligence, and educational technologies. Based on his insights into children’s thinking and learning, Papert recognized that computers could be used not just to deliver information and instruction, but also to empower children to experiment, explore, and express themselves. The central tenet of his Constructionist theory of learning is that people build knowledge most effectively when they are actively engaged in constructing things in the world. As early as 1968, Papert introduced the idea that computer programming and debugging can provide children a way to think about their own thinking and learn about their own learning.

“With a mind of extraordinary range and creativity, Seymour Papert helped revolutionize at least three fields, from the study of how children make sense of the world, to the development of artificial intelligence, to the rich intersection of technology and learning,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “The stamp he left on MIT is profound. Today, as MIT continues to expand its reach and deepen its work in digital learning, I am particularly grateful for Seymour’s groundbreaking vision, and we hope to build on his ideas to open doors to learners of all ages, around the world.”

Papert’s life straddled several continents. He was born in 1928 in Pretoria, South Africa, and went on to study at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, where he earned a BA in philosophy in 1949, followed by a PhD in mathematics three years later. He was a leading anti-apartheid activist throughout his university years.

Papert’s studies then took him overseas – first to Cambridge University in England from 1954-1958, where he focused on math research, earning his second PhD, then to the University of Geneva, where he worked with Swiss philosopher and psychologist Jean Piaget, whose theories about the ways children make sense of the world changed Papert’s view of children and learning.

From Switzerland, Papert came to the U.S., joining MIT as a research associate in 1963. Four years later, he became a professor of applied mathematics, and shortly after was appointed co-director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab (which later evolved into the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL) by its founding director Professor Marvin Minsky. Together, they wrote the 1969 book, “Perceptrons,” which marked a turning point in the field of artificial intelligence.

In 1985, Papert and Minsky joined former MIT President Jerome Wiesner and MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte to become founding faculty members of the MIT Media Lab, where Papert led the Epistemology and Learning research group.

“Seymour often talked poetically, sometimes in riddles, like his famed phrase, ‘you cannot think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something,’” says Negroponte, the Media Lab’s co-founder and first director. “He did not follow rules or run by anybody else’s clock. I would say, in Papertian style, Seymour never needed to do what he said because when he said what he did, it was better.” 

Papert was among the first to recognize the revolutionary potential of computers in education. In the late 1960s, at a time when computers still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Papert came up with the idea for Logo, the first programming language for children. Children used Logo to program the movements of a “turtle” — either in the form of a small mechanical robot or a graphic object on the computer screen. In his seminal book “Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas” (1980), Papert argued against “the computer being used to program the child.” He presented an alternative approach in which “the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building.”

In collaboration with Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, Papert explored how childhood objects have a deep influence on how and what children learn. In “Mindstorms,” Papert explained how he “fell in love with gears” as a child, and how he hoped to “turn computers into instruments flexible enough so that many children can each create for themselves something like what the gears were for me.”

Papert was the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Education at MIT from 1974-1981. In 1985, he began a long and productive collaboration with the LEGO company, one of the first and largest corporate sponsors of the Media Lab. Papert’s ideas served as an inspiration for the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit, which was named after his 1980 book. In 1989, the LEGO company endowed a chair at the Media Lab, and Papert became the first LEGO Professor of Learning Research. In 1998, after Papert became professor emeritus, the name of the professorship was modified, in his honor, to the LEGO Papert Professorship of Learning Research. The professorship was passed on to Papert’s former student and long-time collaborator, Mitchel Resnick, who continues to hold the chair today.

“For so many of us, Seymour fundamentally changed the way we think about learning, the way we think about children, and the way we think about technology,” says Resnick, who heads the Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten research group.

In the late 1990s, Papert moved to Maine and continued his work with young people there, establishing the Learning Barn and the Seymour Papert Institute in 1999. He also set up a Learning Lab at the Maine Youth Center, where he worked to engage and inspire troubled youths who had received little support at home or school, and were grappling with drugs, alcohol, anger, or psychological problems. He was also integral to a Maine initiative requiring laptops for all 7th and 8th graders. Following the Maine initiative, Papert joined Negroponte and Alan Kay in 2004 to create the non-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC), which produced and distributed low-cost, low-power, rugged laptops to the world’s poorest children. The organization produced more than 3 million laptops, reaching children in more than 40 countries. “Each of the laptops has Seymour inside,” says Negroponte.

Papert’s work inspired generations of educators and researchers around the world. He received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1980, a Marconi International fellowship in 1981, and the Smithsonian Award from Computerworld in 1997. In 2001, Newsweek named him “one of the nation’s 10 top innovators in education.”

“Papert made everyone around him smarter — from children to colleagues — by encouraging people to focus on the big picture and zero in on the powerful ideas,” says CSAIL’s Patrick Winston, who took over as director of the AI Lab in 1972.

In addition to “Mindstorms,” Papert was the author of “The Children’s Machine”(1993) and “The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap”(1996). As an emeritus professor, Papert continued to write many articles and advise governments around the world on technology-based education. In 2006, while in Vietnam for a conference on mathematics education, he suffered a serious brain injury when struck by a motor scooter in Hanoi.

Papert is survived by his wife of 24 years, Suzanne Massie, a Russia scholar with whom he collaborated on the Learning Barn and many international projects; his daughter, Artemis Papert; three stepchildren, Robert Massie IV, Susanna Massie Thomas, and Elizabeth Massie; and two siblings, Alan Papert and Joan Papert. He was previously married to Dona Strauss, Androula Christofides Henriques, and Sherry Turkle.

The Media Lab will host a celebration of the life and work of Seymour Papert in the coming months.

Dean Alden Horn, a retired U.S. Navy captain, director of MIT Sea Grant College Program from 1976 to 1982, and MIT alumnus, passed away July 13 in North Carolina, where he had lived for the past 25 years. He was 95 years old.

Horn had a 27-year distinguished career as an officer in the U.S. Navy. He also oversaw MIT Sea Grant receive its coveted college program status — the first private institution to achieve this — and he was the executive officer for two international Arctic research programs.

Born in Hay Springs, Nebraska, on Feb. 19, 1921, Horn graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in June 1943. Upon graduation he served as a submarine officer on both the USS Porpoise and the USS Carp, earning a Silver Star medal for “Conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action as Diving Officer of the USS Carp during the First War Patrol of that vessel.” In 1945, Horn began graduate school at MIT in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. After completing his professional engineering degree in 1949, he switched communities to become an engineering duty officer and served at seven different commands throughout his 27-year Naval career. His final two years of active duty were as commanding officer of the Naval Administrative Unit, MIT where he commanded the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) unit and taught the student Naval officers taking the graduate course to become Naval engineers — a rewarding capstone to Horn’s career.

In September 1970, Horn accepted the position of executive officer at MIT Sea Grant Program. He was a part of the team that lead MIT Sea Grant to receive college program status, the highest designation available in the Sea Grant network in 1976. Shortly thereafter, Horn was named the Director of MIT Sea Grant, a post he held until July of 1982. In recognition of Horn’s extensive work with undergraduate marine education, his pursuit of excellence, and his tireless application to research, an award was established in his name. The Dean Horn Award is presented yearly, along with a $1,000 stipend, to an undergraduate student who demonstrates excellence in design and execution of marine research as well as the ability to clearly communicate their results.

After leaving MIT Sea Grant, Horn became the executive officer for two international Arctic research programs, MIZEX and CEAREX.

In 1992 Horn retired to New Bern, North Carolina, where he lived the rest of his life with his wife, Sharon.

It was Horn’s fervent wish and request that, in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to MIT Sea Grant Dean A. Horn Student Award Fund (MIT Account No. 40055) or to any charity of your choice.

At a memorial service for Drew Esquivel in California, a family friend described a photo that reflected the rising MIT senior’s joyful, adventurous spirit.

Drew and his friends were jumping off some boulders into a pool, all “getting some good air,” according to Steve Vargas, whose family has been close to Drew’s for many years. High above the others, arms outstretched as if shouting “Cowabunga!,” soared Drew.

“He was a go-for-it guy,” Vargas said. “He’d say, ‘Let’s get going.’ ‘I’ll go first.’ ‘We can DO this!’ Drew also had the ability to move others to action and used that wisely to accomplish great things. … We all know he was fiercely competitive, yet he encouraged the success of others and found joy in it.”

Drew Esquivel died on July 16, killed by an alleged drunk driver in Brooklyn, New York. Rising MIT junior Sophia Tabchouri, alum James Balchunas '14, and a third friend, Divya Menezes, were all seriously injured.

On campus at MIT and at the California memorial service in July, which drew hundreds of people from across the country, those who knew Drew recalled a gifted, fun-loving, and compassionate young man, who shared tight bonds with his family and friends.

An “energetic, curious, engaged” student

A native of Healdsburg, California, Drew was majoring in electrical engineering and computer science. He had been living in New York for the summer, working at an internship with the mobile marketing firm Appboy.

MIT faculty knew him as a strong student who connected easily with others, in classes, campus life, and on the wrestling club, of which he was an officer and respected leader.

“His smiling face and gentle manner is imprinted in my mind,” says Arvind, the Johnson Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT and Drew’s academic advisor. “We used to meet to discuss his course registration every term, and he would tell me what was going on his life. I knew he was keen on wrestling but he did not quite fit my naive model of a wrestler, who I thought ought to look more menacing.”

Hari Balakrishnan, the Fujitsu Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, got to know Drew well while teaching him in Course 6.S062 (Mobile and Sensor Computing), a small class co-taught with Professor Sam Madden, that involved programming for iPhones in XCode.

“Drew was a pleasure to talk to and interact with, both in class and during our project meetings through the term,” says Balakrishnan. “He was energetic, curious, engaged. A great team player. Not only smart technically, but he also had the ability to collaborate well with others and communicate ideas well.”

In Balakrishnan’s course, Drew’s group developed a location-based, gesture-encrypted messaging application that allowed users to send each other targeted messages based on their locations.

Drew also participated in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) in the Laboratory for Computational Physiology, where he worked on developing electronic medical record systems for underserved areas.

In high school, Drew attended the distinguished Summer Science Program in New Mexico. When selected for the prestigious scholarship that would give him a full ride to MIT, Drew told the Healdsburg Tribune, “I have been thinking of college since second grade. I always had a dream school in mind and that made it easy to focus on school.”

Athlete and adventurer

A member of MIT’s wrestling club, Drew was named most valuable player in 2015 and rookie of the year in 2014. He was team captain, a three-time National Collegiate Wrestling Association (NCWA) national qualifier, and a NCWA Northeast conference finalist.

In high school, Drew was a varsity swimmer as well as wrestler, and he ran cross-country. He was an Eagle Scout who completed 50-mile hikes with his troop in the High Sierras, and he adventured in the California outdoors with his family and their friends, backpacking, kayaking, and skiing.

Drew’s adventurous spirit and strong work ethic led him to scale many summits, both literal and figurative, says his mother, Susanne Esquivel. “He always ‘bagged the peak,’ thought outside the box to solve problems, strove to be the best, found joy in helping others, put family and friends first, and had fun,” she says.

Forging bonds at MIT

Drew was very “deliberate” about where he applied to college, according to Susanne Esquivel, who says he was “really only interested in Stanford or MIT.” He was offered early admission to Stanford, in his home state, but he had also applied for and received a James Family Foundation scholarship, available at the time to a student at his high school, which provided full tuition to a highly competitive, out-of-state school.

So, Drew attended MIT’s Campus Preview Weekend and returned “excited and firmly committed to MIT,” Susanne says: “He felt he had found the right environment for learning, competing, and making life-long friends. He was right. He received the best education in the world and took advantage of amazing opportunities and making a difference.”

On campus, Drew became very close with his friends, including his fraternity brothers at Lambda Chi Alpha.

“I remember meeting Drew at a fraternity event in the fall of 2013. I noticed immediately how lively and happy he was to be there meeting all these new people — his energy was infectious,” said rising senior Zak Psaras, in a eulogy at the memorial service.

“As quickly as he bonded with the world around him, he bonded with the city and each of us,” Psaras said, reminiscing about the tight-knit group of friends he and Drew were part of.

“Drew knew how to make everyone laugh and would go out of his way to make others feel included, Psaras said. “He never failed to see the good in others. For as comical as Drew was, he always knew when to be serious. If he noticed one of his friends was feeling down, he would be the first to check in. He always went out of his way to make conversation with those who needed it most. When he would ask ‘How's it going, man?’ in the most nonchalant, genuine way possible, you knew he wanted the real answer.

“We all deserve to have a Drew in our lives,” Psaras said.

Drew is survived by his parents, Susanne and Andrew Esquivel, and his sisters, Elisabeth and Emma, all of Healdsburg, California; his grandfather Donald B. Boyd, PhD of Greenwood, Indiana; and his grandparents Andy and Maria Esquivel of Fremont, Ohio.

His parents have established the Drew Esquivel Memorial Scholarship, through the Rotary Club of Healdsburg Sunrise Foundation. This annual, merit-based scholarship will be available to graduates from Healdsburg High School.

A July 20 gathering at the MIT chapel also honored Drew. It followed an email sent to the MIT community at the request of MIT President L. Rafael Reif, who was traveling at the time, in which Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart extended MIT’s deepest sympathy to Drew’s family and friends. To the larger circle of the accident victims’ MIT friends and connections, “we join you in your shock and grief,” she wrote. A memorial service for Drew at MIT is planned for early in the fall semester.

MIT Professor Emeritus Kerson Huang, who was well known for his contributions to the field of statistical physics, passed away on Sept. 1 at the age of 88. He had recently been in hospice care at Kaplan House in Danvers, Massachusetts.

Born March 15, 1928, in Nan King, Kwangsi, China, Huang spent his youth primarily in Manila, Philippines. He received his BS in physics in 1950 and his PhD in 1953, both from MIT. He was one of the most prominent advisees of Austrian-American theoretical physicist Victor Weisskopf. Huang served as an instructor at MIT from 1953 to 1955 before spending two years as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He returned to MIT in 1957 as an assistant professor in physics and was promoted to associate professor in 1961 and to professor in 1966. He was part of the first faculty of the Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) when it was inaugurated in 1968, and was also a researcher in the Laboratory for Nuclear Science. 

Together with C. N. Yang, T. D. Lee, and others, Huang contributed to the development of the consistent many-body description of interactions of identical particles such as helium atoms. With Steven Weinberg, Huang showed that the spectrum of strongly interacting particles is so rich that it implies that there is an ultimate temperature above which the description in terms of hadrons breaks down. Together with T. D. Lee and C. N. Yang and separately with Francis Low, Huang wrote important papers on the nature of the weak interaction, especially the way in which then newly-discovered parity violation could be observed experimentally. His books, "Introduction to Statistical Physics" and "Statistical Physics,"are widely used throughout the world as fundamental texts in the field. 

In addition to his many physics accomplishments, Huang was a broadly engaged intellectual who translated Chinese poetry into English and vice versa. His translations include "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayem: A Rendition in Classical Chinese Quatrains;""I, Ching, the Oracle;" and "I Ching" (with Rosemary Huang). He also published several books of his own poetry in Chinese.

After Huang became a professor emeritus in 1999, he remained with the CTP until 2005 before retiring to Florida. In recent years, he had been a visiting professor at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore. 

Huang was a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. During his career, he was the recipient of fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan, John Simon Guggenheim, and Fulbright Foundations. 

He is survived by his daughter, Kathryn Camille Huang, and by his former wife, Rosemary Huang. Prior to entering hospice, Huang most recently resided in Wakefield, Massachusetts. By his own request, there will be no memorial service.

MIT Professor Emeritus Ali Javan, the institute's first Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics, who was a trailblazer in the fields of laser technology and quantum electronics, died of natural causes in Los Angeles on Sept. 12, at the age of 89. In 1960, while working at Bell Laboratories, Javan invented the world’s first gas laser. The technology would be applied to telecommunications, internet data transmission, holography, bar-code scanners, medical devices, and more.

Javan came to MIT as an associate professor of physics in 1961, and founded the nation’s first large-scale research center in laser technology. Javan also developed the first method for accurately measuring the speed of light and launched the field of high-resolution laser spectroscopy. 

“In the 1960s and 1970s, Professor Javan's laser group at MIT was a hotbed of innovation and advances in amazingly broad areas in laser physics,” said Irving P. Herman PhD '77, who studied with Javan and is currently the Edwin Howard Armstrong Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University. “His group was key to understanding the fundamentals of the interactions of laser with matter, and in implementing them. He will be remembered by his many students and colleagues as a brilliant man, a pioneer, an inspiring man, and a kind and dear man.”

From Tehran to New York City

Ali Javan was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1926, and came to the United States in 1949, where he studied and worked at Columbia University with Nobel prize-winning physicist Charles H. Townes. Not having received either a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree, Javan earned his PhD in physics at Columbia in 1954, with Townes serving as his thesis advisor.

While at Columbia, Javan also studied music, continuing a lifelong passion for the arts that he often connected to his groundbreaking scientific work. “Physics and music — you find the same spirit in both of them,” Javan once wrote. “It just manifests itself in different directions. There’s something immensely beautiful about physics, even though it’s very difficult. Take the atom — a single atom is absolutely gorgeous. Ask anybody in physics.”

Making history: The first gas laser

In 1958, Javan developed the working principle of the first gas discharge helium neon laser. In the following two years, he worked at Bell Laboratories to build it, along with colleague William Bennett.

“The first laser, the ruby laser by Ted Maiman, used optical pumping to create the population inversion necessary to achieve lasing,” Herman notes. “At the time this was difficult and not applicable to all systems. Javan was able to see how a population inversion can be created in a gas discharge by selective, resonant energy transfer. This was key to his invention of the first gas laser, the He-Ne laser, which was also the first continuous wave laser.”

Javan’s breakthrough came on Dec. 12, 1960, after a snowstorm had forced an early closure of the Murray, New Jersey-based Bell Labs. At 4:20 pm that day (Javan checked his watch), for the first time in history, a continuous laser light beam emanated from a gas laser apparatus. As Javan later described it, he “drove the design into its self-sustained oscillation mode. Emanating at its output, for this very first-time ever, a continuous-wave (CW), collimated light beam, at a color purity as it proved to the limits that the law of nature will permit.”

On Dec. 13, 1960, Javan and his Bell Labs colleagues used the laser light beam to place a telephone call, the first time in history that a laser beam had been used to transmit a telephone conversation.

Joining the MIT community

Javan was already an internationally-acclaimed scientist when he came to MIT in 1961. He would spend the next four decades working to drive advances in atomic, molecular, and optical physics. From 1978 to 1996, he was the first Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics, and was emeritusprofessor of physics from 1996 until his death.

Javan sought to be at the scientific forefront, making the next important advance. He once told an interviewer why he worked so tirelessly to answer difficult and diverse scientific questions: “There is something very beautiful at the end of the line that you're looking for. There's an aesthetic element.” Lila Javan, his daughter, says: “He always wanted to break new ground. For example, he was working very hard on nanotechnology at the end of his career.”

Javan was the recipient of numerous awards. In 1993, he was presented the Albert Einstein World Medal of Science in recognition for “his more than 30 years of research into the physics of lasers.” In 2006, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Javan’s original 1960 helium-neon laser device is currently on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

A passionate, inspiring teacher

Javan was a passionate teacher who developed lifelong bonds with generations of students, not only sharing his passion for science but for music and the arts. He wanted students to be well-rounded individuals conversant in more than just physics. As Javan’s former student and colleague Said Nazemi PhD '81, who helped him found Laser Science, Inc., recalls, “I spent a lot of personal time with him and his family, and knew him not just as a great teacher but as someone with a big sense of humor who also loved classical music and gourmet cooking.”

Another of Javan’s associates was Ramachandra Dasari, the associate director of MIT’s George R. Harrison Spectrography Lab, who first came to MIT in 1966. Javan helped shape his entire career, says Dasari: “I became a new person in science because Javan taught me about lasers.” Dasari fondly remembers Javan’s enthusiastic, hands-on approach to pedagogy: “He used to come into the lab often and see what his students were doing with their experiments. He liked to prod and touch things, which made students so nervous, but he just couldn’t help himself.”

Javan helped Dasari gain the financial resources to bring his Indian family to the United States in the late 1960s. Dasari notes that he’d been working at MIT for $8 per day (paid by the U.S. Agency for International Development) when Javan helped him obtain a visiting scientist position at MIT that paid $8,000 per year.

Dasari recalls one memorable, late-night interaction with Javan. They were seeking to measure a laser’s frequency, something that hadn’t been done before, and they’d been working at the lab for about week. “I was doing the experiment, and finally it succeeded around midnight,” says Dasari, who noted that Javan was resting at home. “I thought to myself, well it’s midnight and I shouldn’t call him at home, but I called him anyway. Lo and behold, he came to the lab at 3 a.m. because he was so excited and wanted to see it for himself.”

Javan’s daughter Maia recalls, “He found MIT, and the community of students around him, to be the perfect place for him to grow and flourish. He loved teaching his postdocs, and treated them like part of our family. They’d often have dinner over our house, and then go back to work at the lab. Sharing food and laughter, and enjoying life, that was so important to him.”

A doting father

Javan’s two daughters, Maia and Lila, remember their father as someone with a wide-ranging passion for life, someone brimming with enthusiasms, including science, music, museums, the outdoors, fine food, and more. Javan loved to ride around Cambridge on his bicycle, his daughter Lila Javan recalls, often stopping to buy flowers or chocolate to bring back to his family. “He was a supportive, fun father who was also a great teacher,” she says. “He loved to bring us to his lab, to ‘turn the knobs’ as he liked to say, having us there among his students, and sharing in the fun.”

He could be “extraordinarily absent-minded” at times, explains Javan’s daughter Maia: “His mind was always engaged — he loved to think expansively. On many occasions, dad would drive the family car to work at MIT in the morning and then, lost in thought, walk home in the evening, which would take him about 45 minutes, forgetting that he’d left the car parked at work. So we’d remind him, and send him back to MIT on his bicycle to bring the car back home.”

Final days: Family, music, and physics

During his final days, Javan was surrounded by family and friends in Los Angeles, spending his time “very peacefully,” says daughter Lila. “He was listening to Mahler and Mozart, two of his favorite composers, and having family members read to him from physics journals,” she says.

Ali Javan is survived by his daughters Maia and Lila, his grandchildren Valerik and Riva Perelman, and the mother of his children, Marjorie Javan.

Whitman Richards '53, PhD '65, professor emeritus of cognitive sciences and of media arts and sciences and principal investigator in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, died on Sept. 16 after a long battle with myelofibrosis. One of the first four PhD graduates of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS), his more than 60 years at MIT were marked by a dedication to the experimental and theoretical study of vision, perception, and cognition.

Richards began his affiliation with MIT as an undergraduate, matriculating in 1950. His decision to return to MIT for graduate work was greatly inspired by a meeting with BCS founder and then department head Professor Hans-Lukas Teuber.

“In the 1960’s, with the advent of accessible computer technology, the development of information theory, and the single electrode, there was renewed excitement about prospects for modeling and understanding mind and brain,” Richards said in a 2004 interview. “Teuber’s charisma and broad vision for a new psychol­ogy was a powerful draw [to the department]. …There was a unique opportunity for a non-traditional grounding in a discipline otherwise mired in tradition.”

Richards’ early research pursued traditional psychophysical experimental methods to study the mechanisms of color perception and stereovision. In the 1970s, his research direction and methodology shifted dramatically after meeting noted physiologist David Marr, who he eventually recruited to MIT. Instead of relying on the traditional experimental methods that had characterized his early career, Richards, Marr, and colleagues began to look for the deep, underlying mathematical principles that allowed a human or artificial visual system to look at the world and make accurate inferences about what the system saw or perceived.

“The breadth of his research was really quite remarkable,” says Josh Tenenbaum, MIT professor of computational cognitive science and former Richards graduate student. “As his career developed, he transitioned from studying the parts of vison that are very close to neural mechanisms, to computational representations of perception, to Bayesian statistical models of perception and cognition. He became almost a computational social scientist — he was incredibly flexible in his thinking.” 

Richards’ passionate advocacy for the computational approach to studying visual perception helped to create and nurture the department’s early computational research initiatives.

“Whit’s connection with David Marr back in the late '70s is really the genesis of modern computational social science today,” says MIT Professor Alex Pentland, the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Science and a former Richards graduate student.

Alongside his impressive research legacy, which includes the publication of eight books and over 200 articles, Richards was also regarded by his students and colleagues as a superlative mentor. Many of his former students have found success in a variety of different fields, including psychology, cognitive science, computer science, media, computer graphics, and the defense industry.

“Whitman was an incredibly dedicated advisor. His strategy was to have very few students and make a huge personal investment in each of them,” says John Rubin, a former graduate student of Richards and current executive producer with Tangled Bank Studios at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “He was really great at keeping enthusiasm high in his lab, which took all kinds of forms, but included croquet parties at his home, which were terrifically fun. He was always available and, in fact, it was hard for me to keep up with the amount of time he wanted to devote to our joint work! He was indefatigable and devoted.”

Richards is survived by his wife of 54 years, Waltraud Weller Richards, and three daughters: Diana Richards Doyle and husband Mark S. Doyle of Green Cove Springs, Florida; Sylvia Richards-Gerngross and husband Tillman Gerngross of Hanover, New Hampshire; and Eleanor "Nora" Richards Bender and husband Thomas A. Bender of Dedham, Massachusetts. He is also survived by his two siblings: Lincoln K. Richards and wife Gerda of Wellesley, Massachusetts, and Sylvia Richards Messner of Cave Creek, Arizona; and by two grandchildren, Morgan Kelly Doyle and Serafina Richards-Gerngross. Memorial services will be private.

Ira Dyer, professor emeritus of ocean engineering, died peacefully at his home on Oct. 9 at the age of 91.

Dyer’s distinguished career, with a specialty in acoustics, spanned over six decades. His seminal research had profound impacts in the fields of aeroacoustics, structural acoustics, and underwater acoustics.

Dyer was a valued educator and mentor for many students who are now prominent scientists, and he served as head of MIT's Department of Ocean Engineering (which later merged with the Department of Mechanical Engineering) for 10 years. He also served as president of the Acoustical Society of America and on numerous committees, blue ribbon panels, and advisory boards for government agencies and research companies.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1925, Dyer was the son of Frieda and Charles Dyer, who immigrated to the United States after being forced to flee the Pale of Settlement region of Russia. Dyer thrived as a student at Brooklyn Tech, where his scientific interests were nurtured. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and studied at MIT under the GI bill following the war, receiving his PhD in physics in 1954. In 1949 Dyer married his sweetheart, Betty Schanberg of Clinton, Massachusetts. They were happily married for 68 years.

After his graduate studies, Dyer joined Bolt, Beranek, and Newman Inc., now BBN Technologies. He was hired by Leo Beranek, who would later say that Dyer was one of the three most important people responsible for the success of the company. In one of his first projects, Dyer designed, built, and tested an ultrasonic brain scanner. This system was intended to use active sonar to find brain tumors, and Dyer himself was the first person to undergo an ultrasonic brain scan. The system ended up only measuring bone thickness, but it paved the way for the ultrasonic scanners currently used in cardiology and gynecology.

Dyer later led others in an applied research division that investigated all aspects of sound and vibration in complex structures such as ships, submarines, aircraft, and spacecraft, which resulted in many publications in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA). During the mid 1950s, Dyer helped design the U.S. Navy X-1 submarine, a small four-person diesel-electric sub with a very quiet radiated noise mission. He designed an innovative "triple-stage isolation" engine-mounting system that significantly quieted the vehicle, allowing the submarine to pass sound restrictions. The isolation concept led the way for the U.S. Navy to develop ultraquiet submarines, which provided significant advantages for U.S. submarine operations during the Cold War.

In 1960, the Acoustical Society of America honored Dyer’s early work with its Biennial Award, a recognition to scientists under 35 for their outstanding contributions to acoustics.

In 1971, Dyer became head of the MIT Department of Ocean Engineering, which eventually merged with the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2005. At its helm, he led the department into new areas of ocean engineering that emphasized learning about the ocean environment. Later, Dyer was named the Weber-Shaughness Professor of Ocean Engineering. His expertise and graduate course in ocean acoustics were legendary; he was a consummate professor, both as a lecturer and one-on-one, with a clarity that inspired his students.

In July of 1973, Dyer became director of the Sea Grant Program at MIT. Under his leadership, the Sea Grant Program, created to stimulate research and wise use of the oceans, became a model program, and was widely emulated. Dyer also nurtured other new subjects in ocean acoustics, especially in conjunction with the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program. For many years Dyer played a major role in advising, researching, and designing anti-submarine warfare systems for the Navy, keeping our nation safe during the Cold War.

Dyer made many seminal contributions to acoustics that were published in JASA. His article on the scintillation of ocean ambient noise is still one of the most cited today, as are his significant contributions to structural acoustics, reverberation, and propagation of sound in the sea. The programs Dyer established in these technical areas were international in scope.

Beginning in 1978, Dyer led and participated in six Arctic field programs. The first, the Canadian Basin Arctic Reverberation Experiment, imaged the entire Arctic basin with acoustics, providing evidence of seamounts. He and his students developed a taxonomy of ice noise events that has been fundamental for understanding Arctic noise. In the 1990s, Dyer resumed his research on structural acoustics that influenced contemporary submarine designs: He contributed to one high-level Navy technical advisory committee that led to the contemporary submarine sonar signal-processing suite.

Dyer was a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers; a member of the National Academy of Engineering; and a visiting fellow of Emmanuel College at Cambridge University. He was the recipient of many awards and honors in his long and distinguished career; in 1996 he was awarded the Per Bruel Gold Medal by the Acoustical Society of America, its highest honor.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dyer and his wife, Betty, worked with the organization Action of Soviet Jewry to help place Soviet refugees in appropriate jobs, and they also sponsored a newly arrived family. Dyer was also a longtime philanthropist, with gifts benefiting medical research, the arts, community causes, MIT, and Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

As an independent research consultant during the past 20 years, Dyer served on the board of directors and provided expertise to local ocean acoustic consulting firms founded by some of his former students. He was instrumental in helping to solve a pump vibration problem at the Deer Island Sewer Treatment facility; this problem impacted the construction completion schedule, and the solution allowed the project, a major construction project to eliminate Boston Harbor pollution, to move forward and the pump to operate safely.

Dyer’s joy was in challenging conventional thinking and being challenged by colleagues and students. If one of his students would say, “The data don’t agree with the theory,” Dyer would wag his finger and say, “No, no . . .  The theory does not agree with the data!” Meetings with Dyer are still recalled with gusto. He challenged all to continuously learn and acquire knowledge. He took great pleasure in family and friends, and he will be deeply missed.

Dyer is survived by his wife, Betty; son Samuel Dyer and daughter-in-law Barbara; daughter Debora Dyer Mayer and son-in-law John; and three grandchildren: Ethan Dyer, Charley Mayer, and Owen Mayer.

Individuals wishing to make a donation in Dyer’s memory can do so to the following: Parents and Researchers Interested in Smith-Magenis Syndrome (PRISMS), which supports those with a genetic disorder that Dyer’s oldest grandson was born with; Care Dimensions, the North Shore hospice that was wonderful and loving to the Dyer family; or the Charles and Frieda Dyer Memorial Fund (3413500), a tuition scholarship at MIT established by Ira and Betty in honor of Dyer's parents.

MIT Professor Susan Lee Lindquist, a member and former director of the Whitehead Institute, and one of the nation’s most lauded scientists, yesterday succumbed to cancer at age 67. Her nearly 40-year career was defined by intellectually courageous, boundary-defying research and a passion for nurturing new generations of scientific talent.

“Sue has meant so much to Whitehead as an institution of science, and as a community of scientists, and her passing leaves us diminished in so many ways,” reflects David C. Page, director of Whitehead Institute and a professor of biology at MIT. “She was a risk-taker and an innovator. She believed that if we were not reaching for things beyond our grasp, we were not doing our job as researchers; if we were not constantly striving for that which we could only imagine, we were not fulfilling our obligations to society as scientists.”

A cornerstone of the Whitehead Institute community, a professor of biology at MIT, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Lindquist was a widely respected researcher with a global reputation for biomedical innovation. She made numerous, invaluable contributions to the study of protein folding, demonstrating that alternative protein conformations can have profound and unexpected influences. Lindquist’s research transformed budding yeast into a model organism for studying human disease, evolution, and biomaterials.

She was best known for her work on prions — proteins that exhibit an unusual ability to exist in multiple stable structural states, with altered functions depending on the state. Using yeast, she and her colleagues demonstrated that prions have the capacity to drive change in an organism’s inherited characteristics without changing its DNA or RNA — relying instead on an ability to change how proteins fold. In a seminal breakthrough in evolutionary biology, her laboratory showed that prions can help activate many previously hidden (inactive) biophysical interactions, producing new traits that are passed on to subsequent generations. In other words, by uncovering (activating) previously hidden genetic variation that can help cells survive changes in their environment, prions provide a mechanism for the evolution of beneficial new traits.

In humans, devastating neurological illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, and Huntington’s diseases involve proteins that change their conformation and thereby spur pathological processes. Among the many technical innovations created by her lab, Lindquist imported several of these disease-causing proteins into yeast, creating a platform with which to study disease-causing changes in protein folding in action and to test potential therapies for the ability to prevent the protein’s toxicity.

A committed teacher and dedicated mentor to generations of biomedical and basic research scientists, Lindquist served as a professor at the University of Chicago for 23 years and then at MIT, where she had taught concurrent with her Whitehead Institute appointment since 2001. During her 15-year career at Whitehead alone, she supervised 115 fellows, graduate students, and undergraduates.

“Inspired by Susan’s seminal work on the role of protein folding in evolutionary processes, I came to her laboratory at the Whitehead on a sabbatical from my role as a professor of pediatric oncology,” remembers Luke Whitesell, a senior research scientist in the Lindquist lab at Whitehead Institute. “Breaking traditional boundaries, we sought to learn whether some of the same basic mechanisms she had discovered in yeast might fuel the malignant progression of cancers and enable them to acquire drug resistance. The nurturing, extraordinarily cross-disciplinary research environment that she had created for her students and postdocs was captivating. Over a dozen years later, I am still here, privileged to have assisted her in training a new generation of physicians and scientists who share her conviction that deep biological insight is essential to improving the treatment of human diseases. We are all devastated by her loss, but determined to carry her vision forward.” 

Brooke Bevis, manager of the Lindquist lab, observes that, “Sue was the most creative, out-of-the-box scientific thinker I’ve known. She had a unique biological intuition — an instinct for the way things worked and the right questions to ask. And she was indefatigable, seeming to draw strength and stamina from the science itself.”

From 2001 to 2004, Lindquist served as director of Whitehead Institute — becoming one of the first women in the nation to lead a major independent research organization. In 2004, she resumed her research focus as an Institute member, an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and an associate member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. 

“Sue was a terrific scientist, colleague, and friend to many of us,” says Alan Grossman, the Praecis Professor of Biology and head of MIT’s Department of Biology. “She will be deeply missed at MIT and in the scientific community. Our thoughts and wishes go out to her family and loved ones.”

“Sue's bold strategies and unique ideas to understand neurodegenerative disease were recognized by her peers and supported by generous partners, including the JPB Foundation and the Belfer Family Foundation,” observes Li-Huei Tsai, professor of neuroscience and director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT. “She was a titan in the field and a genuine luminary, appreciated for her candor, friendship, thoughtful behavior, and superb communication skills. Her work and influence will continue to accelerate the fight against diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, as well as inspire and educate upcoming generations of scientific leaders.”

“I met Sue when I arrived at the University of Chicago in 1980, and we’ve been close friends ever since. I was Sue’s maid of honor at her wedding; she introduced me to my husband,” recalls Elaine Fuchs, the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator at The Rockefeller University. “In Chicago, we taught together and shared our HHMI labs. Throughout these past 35 years, we’ve fueled each other’s science through many discussions and dinners together. I’ve never met another scientist as creative and visionary as Sue, nor a person so caring and loving. She was the gentle giant of science, and her work will continue to shape research and medicine — and inspire her family, friends, colleagues, students, and postdocs — long into the future.”   

An insightful leader with an incomparable perspective on the intersection of academic and commercial medical research, Lindquist served as an elected member of the Johnson & Johnson Board of Directors since 2004, chairing its Science, Technology and Sustainability Committee and sitting on its Regulatory, Compliance and Government Affairs Committee. A biomedical entrepreneur in her own right, she co-founded FoldRx Pharmaceuticals and founded Yumanity Therapeutics and REVOLUTION Medicines.

“Sue’s global reputation in biomedical innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, her courageous leadership and her commitment to teaching are an inspiration for all of us and for generations to come,” says Alex Gorsky, chairman and chief executive officer of Johnson & Johnson. “With her keen perspectives, Sue’s made invaluable contributions to Johnson & Johnson and consistently challenged us to deliver more innovation and enhance our commitment to scientific excellence and to patients worldwide.”

Lindquist received many awards for her extraordinarily productive research, including the President’s National Medal of Science — the highest scientific honor bestowed by the United States — as well as the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the Otto-Warburg Prize, the Genetics Society of America Medal, the FASEB Excellence in Science Award, the Max Delbrück Medal, the Mendel Medal, the E.B. Wilson Medal, a Vallee Visiting Professorship, the Vanderbilt Prize for Women’s Excellence in Science and Mentorship, and the Albany Prize. She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the British Royal Society.

“Sue was not only a superb basic scientist, but also a committed leader,” says Erin O’Shea, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “She served as a role model for women in science, including me. Sue purposefully worked to mentor numerous students and postdocs, who have since gone on to successful careers. She will be deeply missed.”

Born on June 5, 1949, Lindquist earned an undergraduate degree in microbiology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a PhD in biology from Harvard University. She is survived by her husband, Edward Buckbee; two daughters, Alana Buckbee and Nora Buckbee; and Nora’s husband, Christopher Mannion; as well as her brothers and sisters-in-law Alan Lindquist and Stephanie Russell, and John Lindquist and Janice Moore.

Gifts in honor and memory of Susan Lindquist may be made to the Whitehead Institute Fund to Encourage Women in Science (lindquistfund@wi.mit.edu).

D. Reid Weedon Jr. ’41, MIT Corporation life member emeritus, global businessman, inspiring mentor, lifelong sailor and outdoorsman, and outstanding fundraiser for the institutions he loved, died at his home in Cohasset, Massachusetts, on Nov. 2 at the age of 96. 

Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Weedon earned a BS in general engineering at MIT in 1941 and later served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Shortly after the war, he joined the international consulting firm Arthur D. Little (ADL), retiring as senior vice president after more than 50 years. One of his first clients was the government of Puerto Rico, which hired ADL to help industrialize its economy.

Most notable of his work for ADL, and most meaningful to him, was monitoring the “Sullivan Principles.” Set forth by the Reverend Leon Sullivan, these principles for U.S. companies doing business in South Africa sought to end South Africa's economic isolation and, ultimately, apartheid. This work lasted 17 years until South Africa approved the reform process and held its first democratic elections in 1994. Weedon’s final visit, of more than 21 trips to that country, came just after Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

A tireless volunteer and trustee, Weedon loved — and excelled at — fundraising. MIT President L. Rafael Reif wrote that he doubted “there has been anyone more instrumental than Weedon in building a culture of giving at MIT, and the benefits of this are everywhere around me.”

Weedon served in almost every leadership position at MIT. He was a member of the MIT Corporation, president of the MIT Alumni Association, an energetic force in every MIT capital campaign, and a mentor to a generation of fundraisers who remained devoted to him. He was a dedicated member of the Phi Beta Epsilon fraternity at MIT and was committed throughout his life to supporting the academic, personal, and professional development of its undergraduates.

At Boston's Museum of Science, Weedon became a life trustee after serving as chair of its board. In recent years, he chaired the museum’s planned giving subcommittee and served as a member of the campaign executive committee. He was also a trustee of the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences. As Linda Leddy, past president of Manomet, recalls, "'No' was not a word that meant much to Weedon — there was always a way ahead."

Weedon and his wife, the late wife Barbara Jencks Weedon, were longtime residents of Winchester, Massachusetts, where Reid was president of the Winchester Hospital board. He played a significant role in planning for the present and future of the Weedon homestead, constructed in the early 1890s by his grandfather in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and was the head of the Weedon Family Corporation, now numbering more than 160 descendants.

He loved to fly. Weedon was a licensed pilot, glider pilot, and hot air balloon operator. He cherished his time in Southport, Maine. In the 1960s, he bought a small island where he and his family built a cabin — transporting everything themselves. A keen sailor, he loved boats and built more than half a dozen during his lifetime; he was still cruising the waters of Maine at age 93. He enjoyed gardening, and no weed was safe in his lawn. If the tool did not exist, he would invent and craft one.

Weedon is survived by his wife, Estelle Miller Weedon, of Cohasset; his son, Charles Reid Weedon, and partner Susan Devokaitis of Pomfret, Connecticut; his daughter, Sarah Jencks Weedon, and partner Deirdre Robinson of Bristol, Rhode Island; his granddaughter, Emily Weedon Chapman, and partner Peter Chapman, and great-grandson Corbett Reid Chapman, all of Washington. He is also survived by Rebecca Lacy, Nicholas Lacy, and Margaret Lacy Golston, the children of his sister, the late Mary Weedon Lacy; and by his stepdaughters, Amanda Cashman Harvey and Josephine Cashman.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m., Friday, Dec. 2, in the MIT Chapel, 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Donations may be made in his memory to MIT, the Museum of Science, or the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences.

Stephen R. Connors SM '89, director of the MIT Analysis Group for Regional Energy Alternatives (AGREA) and a leading alternative-energy researcher who helped bring solar and wind power into the mainstream, died peacefully at home on Nov. 13 after a four-year battle with cancer. He was 58.

“Steve was a wonderful colleague,” reflects Robert Armstrong, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI). “His research on renewable energy balanced technology, systems, and human needs carefully. This was particularly well illustrated by his work on Green Islands as part of the MIT-Portugal program. He was a terrifically optimistic and positive collaborator, and one of the most resilient people I have ever had the pleasure to know. He will be sorely missed in our community.”

Connors spent more than 26 years working at MIT as a researcher, mentor, and instructor. He led alternative energy projects around the world at a time when many people were still skeptical about their viability. He thus helped usher in the current era where solar and wind installations can be seen dotting landscapes around the world, serving as mainstream energy solutions in a number of countries.

“His love was regional energy planning with a special emphasis on integrating renewable energy sources and conservation into energy grids,” says David Marks, the Goulder Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems, emeritus, and professor emeritus of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. “He worked on a variety of projects in Portugal; Norway; Mexico City; Shandong, China; Switzerland; Argentina; the United Kingdom; and even New England looking at a broad array of scenarios around new generation technologies.”

Connors was a prominent figure at the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, where he served as director of the Alliance for Global Sustainability Energy Flagship program and then director of AGREA. In both roles, he tackled a variety of energy challenges across the globe. He believed that there is no single silver-bullet solution for a sustainable energy future and that instead we need to optimize a portfolio of solutions and within each technology to move from “best practice” to “next practice.”

Additionally, as a distinguished researcher and mentor in a variety of MITEI programs, Connors led a cross-Atlantic partnership between MIT and major technological universities in Portugal that was designed to integrate renewable resources like wind, solar, and tidal into energy grids. This joint research included a major focus on strengthening graduate energy and technology programs at Portugal’s leading technology institutes. Connors’ work in Portugal was a powerful demonstration of his ability to marry research with real-world practice to change the way energy is supplied and used in the world.

In the Azores, Connors led the Green Islands Program, which designed to use this region as a testing ground for renewable integration and as a platform for other islands that are dependent on imported fossil fuels. Recently, Portugal was listed as one of the first countries to run four days straight on only renewable energy (wind, solar, and hydro generated electricity), producing zero emissions. As of 2015, renewables provide 48 percent of Portugal’s electricity.

“Steve Connors represented the best of a research and a student-advising colleague that any of us could have had,” recalls Richard Tabors, director of the Utility of the Future study and visiting scholar at MITEI. “From the first days of the AGREA project through multiple international renewable efforts he was always the ‘go to’ person — for facts, for support, for the next good idea, and for a smile and a positive word. The MIT energy community has lost a terrific colleague.”

Connors was a frequent and popular speaker on all energy issues at many global forums. In 2014, he shared his views on how to build a bridge to a more sustainable energy future in a well-attended TEDx talk. He met his wife when he accepted her invitation to speak at a local Cambridge community potluck and arrived with a PowerPoint on wind energy and a homemade broccoli salad.

In early work with the Peace Corps in Benin, Connors lived for two years in a hut with no running water or electricity and was charged with building wood-conserving cooking stoves to save forests. The experience taught him the importance of adapting technology to a specific geography. He was a tireless advocate for a more sustainable future, and these passions led him to co-found AltWheels, which has become one of the larger alternative transportation festivals in New England for fleets, and to co-chair the conservation committee for the Appalachian Mountain Club.

Connors had a deep love of nature, hiking, and exploration. His travels and work took him to various countries, among them Switzerland, France, England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Thailand, Cambodia, Japan, China, India, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Benin, Togo, Niger, Kenya, and Saudi Arabia.

Born in Lakewood, Ohio, in 1958, Connors attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he studied physical anthropology and in 1980 received a BA magna cum laude with concentrations in economic development, technology and change, and applied and biological anthropology. After serving in the Peace Corps, he returned to UMass Amherst, where in 1986 he received a BS cum laude in mechanical engineering with a concentration in energy systems, solar, wind, hydrogen, water, thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics. He also earned a master’s in technology and policy at MIT in 1989 with concentrations in electric power systems planning, energy and the environment, and the use of technical information in complex decision-making processes.

Connors is survived by his wife, Alison Sander; his mother, Margaret Connors; his two sisters, Jennifer Connors and Martha Connors; his brother, Mike Connors; and four nieces.

Services will be held at Newbury Court in Concord, Massachusetts, in December and at the MIT Chapel in spring 2017. Details will be shared on Connors’ website: stephenrconnors.com.

Jay W. Forrester SM ’45, professor emeritus in the MIT Sloan School of Management, founder of the field of system dynamics, and a pioneer of digital computing, died Nov. 16. He was 98.

Forrester’s time at MIT was rife with invention. He was a key figure in the development of digital computing, the national air defense system, and MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. He developed servomechanisms (feedback-based controls for mechanical devices), radar controls, and flight-training computers for the U.S. Navy. He led Project Whirlwind, an early MIT digital computing project. It was his work on Whirlwind that led him to invent magnetic core memory, an early form of RAM for which he holds the patent, in 1949.

MIT Sloan Professor John Sterman, a student, friend, and colleague of Forrester’s since the 1970s, points to a 2003 photo of Forrester on a Segway as an illustration of his work’s lasting impact.

“He really is standing on top of the fruits of his many careers,” Sterman said. “He’s standing on a device that integrates servomechanisms, digital controllers, and a sophisticated feedback control system.”

“From the air traffic control system to 3-D printers, from the software companies use to manage their supply chains to the simulations nations use to understand climate change, the world in which we live today was made possible by Jay’s work,” he said.

Systems dynamics: A new view of management

It was after turning his attention to management in the mid-1950s that Forrester developed system dynamics — a model-based approach to analyzing complex organizations and systems — while studying a General Electric appliance factory. An MIT Technology Review article explores how he sought to combat the factory’s boom-and-bust cycle by examining its “weekly orders, inventory, production rate, and employees.” He then developed a computer simulation of the GE supply chain to show how management practices, not market forces, were causing the cycle.

Forrester’s “Industrial Dynamics” was published in 1961. The field expanded to chart the complexities of economies, supply chains, and organizations. Later, he cast the principles of system dynamics on global issues in “Urban Dynamics,” published in 1969, and “World Dynamics,” published in 1971. The latter was an integrated simulation model of population, resources, and economic growth. Forrester became a critic of growth, a position that earned him few friends.

“Many businesses, government officials, and academics hated it,” Sterman said, “yet today, the collision between the finite resources of our planet and population and economic growth drives issues from climate change to deforestation, collapsing fisheries, resource conflict, and mass migrations.” Four of Forrester’s students would rely on his ideas to write “The Limits to Growth,” a 1972 book that helped to launch the field of global modeling and the sustainability movement around the world.  

In many ways, system dynamics stands in opposition to the idea that a charismatic or talented leader can steer a wayward firm to success, a tension Forrester explained to MIT Technology Review.

“Very often people are just role players within a [company’s] system,” he said. “They are not running it; they are acting within it. This has not been a popular idea with people who think they are in charge … but in fact, unless they are knowledgeable in systems, they will fall into a pattern of doing what the system dictates. If they understand the system, they can alter that behavior.”

At MIT Sloan, Forrester created the Refrigerator Game, a supply chain simulation that teaches the principles of system dynamics. It was later dubbed the Beer Game and remains a popular exercise during student orientation.

“What made Jay so special is because of his background in digital computing, he saw, with the advent of the digital computer, the ability to do simulations that were both large-scale and practical,” said MIT Sloan Professor Nelson Repenning. “He appreciated that far before anyone.”

From the family ranch to MIT

All this from a boy who grew up working the family ranch.

“I’ve had several careers,” he told MIT Technology Review.“Starting with ranch hand.”

Forrester was born July 14, 1918 in Nebraska. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Nebraska in 1939. He arrived at MIT the same year as a graduate student in the School of Engineering, earning a master's in 1945. He joined what would become the MIT Sloan faculty in 1956 and retired in 1989.

“To me, Jay was MIT,” Repenning said. “He showed up to work on gunsights and radar mounts for the U.S. military, ended up playing a pioneering role in digital computing, and suddenly became a social scientist. I can’t imagine that happening anywhere else. It was the perfect match of a unique person [and institution].”

Sterman said Forrester had high standards as a teacher, but that submitting work to his rigorous inspection was rewarding.

“It was a great experience to have Jay mark up one of your papers with his red pen,” he said. “The way to learn the most from Jay was first of all to recognize that he was probably right and you were wrong, and secondly, to just be grateful for the gift of all that criticism, because everything you did after that was better.”

Forrester was married for 64 years to Susan (Swett) Forrester, who died in 2010. He is survived by a daughter, Judith; two sons, Nathan and Ned; four grandchildren, Matthew, Julia, Neil, and Katherine; and two great grandchildren, Everett and Faraday.

Arthur D. Kaledin, professor emeritus of history and American studies, died on Saturday, Nov. 27, at the age of 86 at Massachusetts General Hospital, surrounded by family and close friends.

Kaledin graduated from Harvard University in 1952, and following several years in the U.S. Army — during which he sustained an injury that led him to walk with a cane thereafter — he returned to Harvard, where he received his PhD in 1964. Kaledin subsequently joined what was then called the Humanities Department at MIT, and went on to teach several generations of students at the Institute.

Reflecting on his former colleague, MIT Associate Provost and Ford International Professor of History Philip S. Khoury said, “Arthur was a splendid colleague and a dedicated teacher who thrived in the small seminar settings that MIT provides students for their humanities courses."

Of Kaledin’s "Tocqueville and His America: A Darker Horizon" (Yale University Press, 2011), a much-admired biography of French diplomat and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, Professor Stanley Katz, a historian and legal scholar at Princeton University said, “Kaledin teases out the ambiguities and complexities of Tocqueville’s life with astonishing perspicuity, offering a subtle and complex analysis.” 

In his 2011 story about "Tocqueville and His America," MIT News writer Peter Dizikes recounts a conversation with Kaledin about his book: "'Tocqueville saw cultural and social tendencies that he thought would weaken American democracy,’ Kaledin said….[His] apprehensions, in Kaledin’s view, largely focused on the problems a democratic culture might pose for democratic politics. For instance, Kaledin says, Tocqueville thought ‘populism would gradually lead to an anti-intellectual culture and to mediocrity in political leadership.’ Tocqueville was also, Kaledin says, uneasy with the extent to which American culture 'heavily emphasized material values over all others.'"

Remembering Kaledin’s devotion to teaching, Professor Jeffrey Ravel, current head of the MIT History section, said, “Arthur was a fiercely principled teacher. In the classroom he challenged MIT undergraduates to think about the political and moral implications of the technologies they were creating. His contributions to the formation of the great engineers, scientists, scholars, and world citizens we educate at MIT will not easily be replicated.”

Scores of MIT graduates will remember Kaledin for his accessibility and warmth — among them the many students who, when they could not travel home for the holiday, were invited to join the Kaledin family for Thanksgiving, as well as students in Kaledin’s freshman seminars, who enjoyed his tradition of an annual class lunch at Mary Chung’s restaurant, where the proprietor invariably greeted Kaledin with “Good to see you again, Professor!”

Kaledin's early Army injury eventually led to his use of a wheelchair in later years, a fact that did nothing to dampen his love of life. He is survived by his former wife, Eugenia (Oster) Kaledin, of Lexington, Massachusetts; two sons, Nicholas, of New York City, and Jonathan, of Princeton, New Jersey; a daughter, Elizabeth, of New York City; and seven grandchildren.

Kaledin will long be remembered for his sustained contributions to MIT and to the humanities generally. Family and friends note that he will particularly be missed for his wit and wisdom, his huge heart, his conversation and wide-ranging interests, and how engaged and doting he was as a father and grandfather.

Private services are planned.
 

Bruce Mazlish, a highly regarded historian who served as a professor of history at MIT for more than 50 years, died of natural causes on Nov. 27. He was 93 years old.

A winner of the prestigious Toynbee Prize, which recognizes social scientists for significant academic and public contributions to humanity, Mazlish published numerous influential volumes in the course of his career, including "The Western Intellectual Tradition: From Leonardo to Hegel" (Harper Bros, 1960), which is still used in college courses today.

Mazlish pioneered the field of psychohistory, along with historians such as Erik Erikson, in volumes including "James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the 19th Century" (Basic Books, 1975). Over more than five decades as a scholar, he published more than two dozen volumes of history and was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on Sept. 15, 1923, Mazlish attended Boys High School and graduated from Columbia University in 1940. During World War II, he served in the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the modern Central Intelligence Agency, and he later returned to Columbia to earn his PhD in European studies.

After spells as a journalist and then a high school teacher, Mazlish joined the faculty of the University of Maine in Brunswick, before coming to MIT in 1955. He subsequently spent the rest of his professional life at the Institute, retiring in 2003. Courses he taught include “Marx, Darwin, and Freud,” “Modernity, Post-modernity and Capitalism,” and “The New Global History.”

Mazlish’s first book, "The Western Intellectual Tradition," co-authored with British mathematician Jacob Bronowski, argued that the foundations for modern science can be found in a set of insights initially made during the Renaissance. This and other of Mazlish’s volumes found a broad and enthusiastic general readership. His well-known profile of President Richard Nixon, "In Search of Nixon," which was published just a month before the Watergate revelations, remains widely read to this day.

In the late 1980s, Mazlish began to explore post-WWII globalization, examining the idea of humanity from an historical and interdisciplinary perspective. Out of this came, among other things, the New Global History Initiative, launched in the early 2000s with the goal of reimagining the study of history in a more pluralistic, multicultural age.

Mazlish is survived by his wife, Neva Goodwin, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; his sister, Elaine Wyden, of Westport, Connecticut; and a former wife, Anne Mazlish, of Mount Desert, Maine. His first marriage was to Constance Shaw, who passed away in 1993. He is also survived by his four children, Cordelia Savala and Peter Shaw Mazlish of Atlanta, Georgia; Anthony Mazliish of Chevy Chase, Maryland; and Jared Mazlish of Burlington, Vermont; as well as two stepchildren and six grandchildren.

Richard M. Held, a professor emeritus and former head of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences who spent a lifetime investigating the mechanisms of visual perception, died at home of congestive heart failure on Nov. 21. He was 94.

As a faculty member and researcher at three institutions of higher education — Brandeis University, MIT, and the New England College of Optometry — Held pursued a lifelong interest in research on how the visual system develops and adapts, following the advice of Gestalt psychology founder and personal mentor Wolfgang Köhler to “make discoveries.”

Held was born in Manhattan, New York City, on Oct. 10, 1922, the only child of Lawrence W. Held, a shipping export broker, and Tess (Klein) Held, an artist who worked for a time in fashion design. He spent his childhood taking things apart — clocks, locks, and batteries — and then making things, including electric motors and crystal radios, and reading about Tom Swift, the boy inventor.

In a memoir published in 2008 in The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, Held traced the source of his enduring interest in perception to a 1928 holiday ride with his parents on an excursion boat that sailed from Battery Park to Coney Island. As he recounted, “It was a bright sunny day, and once the boat was in the channel I scanned the water idly looking at birds and boats. At one point I shifted my gaze to the deck on which our chairs sat. I felt a mild shiver as I watched the deck. It was moving under me. What was happening? After a minute or two, I realized that the deck was not going anywhere, it just appeared to move: I would much later learn that this was a paradox that exemplifies the difference between perception and physics.”

As a student at Columbia University, where he earned degrees in engineering and liberal arts, he was influenced by the celebrated art historian and personal mentor Meyer Schapiro, whom he credited with stirring his interest in research through an assignment to write about a piece of art. Held chose Van Gogh’s "Starry Night," observing the depiction of the moon resembled an eclipse, and speculating the painting was an allegory of the Holy Trinity. The essay prompted Schapiro to reference an illuminated medieval manuscript with a similar theme, and crediting Held with it in a journal article. Held wrote of the experience: “It showed me that with motivation, effort, and devotion, one could discover the underlying truths in the world and its artifacts: what I later learned to call research. And, just as important, I COULD DO IT.”

Held served in the Navy in World War II, where he was a tactical radar officer on the USS Kadashan Bay and USS Saratoga in the Pacific, earning the rank of second lieutenant. He was stationed at Eniwetok Atoll, ready for a planned ground invasion, when the war ended after the dropping of the atomic bomb.

After the war, he became a lab assistant to Wolfgang Köhler, who had left Nazi Germany in 1935 for Swarthmore College, co-authoring with him a 1949 Science paper demonstrating that moving a bright object in front of a stationary observer produced a corresponding electrical field in the brain. The paper’s conclusion was called “prophetic” of later research by David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel that vision was made possible by electrical responses in individual neurons.

Held earned a master’s degree from Swarthmore College, a doctorate from Harvard University, and joined the faculty of Brandeis University in 1953 ,where he remained until 1962. There, he conducted with then-graduate student and future MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty colleague Alan Hein what became his most famous experiment, demonstrating that, in the words of Held’s late French colleague Marc Jeannerod, “perception is constructed by action.” Their work showed the strong role of self-produced movement in visual development: In order to properly judge depth, and distinguish between objects, animals (including humans) need active interaction with the environment. Simply seeing the world and being passively moved in it is not enough.

Two kittens were placed in a carousel, one actively moving itself while pulling a passive mate in a gondola-like cradle. While both kittens were exposed to the same sights, only the kitten actively moving itself was able to acquire the ability to guide itself visually. For example, the active kitten could accurately reach for an object with its paw; the passive kitten could not. Forty-two years later, inspired by those results first published in 1963, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Centre for Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex reported in a 2005 paper that the same was true for robots capable of collision-free navigation.

In 1962, Held moved to MIT to join then department head Hans-Lukas Teuber in the Department of Experimental Psychology, one of the earliest centers of neuroscience. As the chair of what is now MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) from 1977 to 1986, Held mentored several generations of graduate students, and oversaw the department's growth into one of the premiere neuroscience and cognitive science institutions. He was named professor emeritus in 1993.

After retirement from MIT, from 2001 to 2010, he was director of research and graduate education at The New England College of Optometry in Boston, undertaking research with colleagues into the early development of myopia.

In 2003, he joined the MIT laboratory of Pawan Sinha, a professor of vision and computational neuroscience, and became a collaborator in Project Prakash, a non-profit founded by Sinha that restores the sight of congenitally blind children in India and researches their subsequent development of vision. In a paper published in 2011 in Nature Neuroscience titled “The newly sighted fail to match seen with felt,” Held and Sinha reported that newly-sighted subjects who sensed objects with their hands could not identify them by sight — at least at first. However, after a week with sight, their abilities rapidly improved. The findings, which answered a question first posed in 1688, forced a reconsideration of the conventional view that if children lack sight in early childhood, they will never be able to make visual sense of the world. The rapidity of improvement suggested that the visual system is, in some sense, pre-wired, but relies importantly on the feedback between sight and touch that is gained by experience.

"Dick made a remarkable set of contributions to vision science, all with a deep appreciation for the history of which he was part," says Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. "I had learned about Dick’s work as an undergraduate in Montreal in 1972, and it was a privilege to have been his colleague. He will be missed, but remembered."

Lothar Spillmann, professor of psychology at the National Taiwan University adds: “He was a great scientist and mentor and a beacon of modesty, fairness, and honesty. His passing leaves a tremendous void in the field. To those of us who remember him, he will always be in our hearts and lovingly so.”

Scientific research was a source of pleasure to Held until the end of his life, and he maintained close contact with his colleagues, attending meetings of Sinha’s laboratory until six months before his death. His final paper of more than 200, in which he was a senior author with Sinha as lead author, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences when he was 92 years old — a testament to his unending devotion to research. The paper, “Autism as a disorder of prediction,” laid out a far-reaching theoretic framework to account for multiple aspects of autism, and has already proved influential in guiding empirical studies that seek to understand this complex condition. He died with an open copy of Science News next to his computer keyboard. 

Held led an active life, commuting by bicycle to MIT in the 1960s and 1970s at a time when that was rare, and was an avid tennis player into his 60s at the Cambridge Tennis Club. With his wife, he was an enthusiastic member of the Old Cambridge Shakespeare Association, which met monthly to read the works of the Bard aloud. Over the past decade-and-a-half, he was an active member of a memoir-writing group led by Clark C. Abt, the founder of a policy research firm, where his autobiographical sketches revealed a wry sense of humor in finely-crafted prose.

Held was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded three honorary doctorates, including one from the Free University of Brussels presented by King Baudouin, and received multiple professional awards including the Galileo Award of the American Foundation for Vision Awareness, the Kenneth Craik Award from Cambridge University, the Howard Crosby Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and the Glenn A. Fry Award from the American Academy of Optometry.

He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Doris Bernays Held, a retired psychotherapist; three children, Lucas Held of New Haven, Connecticut, Julia Held of Westhampton, Massachusetts, and Andrew Held of Northampton, Massachusetts; and two grandchildren. In June, he and Doris moved to Northampton to be close to their daughter Julia and her family.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Project Prakash, 955 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 351, Cambridge, MA 02139, or through projectprakash.org. A memorial service is planned for the spring in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Longtime MIT employee Mariann (Marletta) Carnazzo of Somerville, Massachusetts, died on Saturday, Dec. 3, at the deRahm Hospice House in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was 74.

Carnazzo worked at MIT for 53 years, beginning in 1959 when she was in high school. She held many positions in what was then the Contract Accounting Office. In 1986, Carnazzo was promoted to administrative assistant in the Office of the Treasurer. She retired in 2012 as senior accounts payable assistant in the Office of the Vice President for Finance.

Carnazzo is remembered by many at MIT as a generous and gracious colleague who worked hard and always pitched in to get the job done. Overseeing the front desk in accounts payable in Building E19 for many years, she greeted everyone with a warm smile and worked hard to resolve issues and solve problems.

Carnazzo is survived by her husband, Joseph Carnazzo; son, Frank Rosa, and his fiancée, Aimee Sanborn, of Chelmsford, Massachusetts; stepchildren Joseph, Jerome, Thomas, Robert, Mark, Eric, and Christopher Carnazzo; and grandchildren Juliana and Gabriella Rosa of Wilmington, Massachusetts. Another stepson, Michael Carnazzo, predeceased her.

A memorial mass will be held at St. Ann Church, 399 Medford St., Somerville, on Monday, Dec. 12, at 11 a.m. Relatives and friends are invited to attend and may visit with the family at the Dello Russo Funeral Home, 306 Main St., Medford, Massachusetts, from 9-10:30 a.m.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent in Carnazzo's name to the American Cancer Society, 30 Speen St., Framingham, MA 01701.