Faculty & Staff

Bertram “Bert” Cohler, U-High’57, AB’61, the William Rainey Harper professor in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division, died May 9 in Chicago. He was 73. A psychologist who was an expert on family life and transitions, Cohler taught at UChicago for four decades. Before joining the faculty in 1972, he was Bruno Bettelheim’s successor as director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School. A longtime cochair of the Self, Culture, and Society Core sequence and a resident head, Cohler twice received the University’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and in 2006 received the Alumni Association’s Norman Maclean Faculty Award. His wife, Anne (Meyers) Cohler, AB’62, died in 1989. He is survived by his partner, Bill Hensley; sons Jonathan Cohler, U-High’85, and James Cohler, U-High’89; a sister; and three grandchildren.

Leslie Hornig, SM’91, PhD’95, a University of Chicago Laboratory Schools teacher, died of cancer April 18 in Chicago. She was 54. Before earning her PhD, Hornig worked at the US Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education and then joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where she coauthored three editions of the National Forum for School Science report and recommendations. In 1998 she left her postdoctoral genetics research position to join the Lab Schools as a fourth-grade teacher. She is survived by her husband, David Kleeman, and daughters Caroline Kleeman, U-High’06, and Emily Kleeman, U-High’10.

Larry A. Sjaastad, AB’57, AM’58, PhD’61, professor emeritus in economics and the College, died May 2 in Chicago. He was 77. Sjaastad taught at Chicago for 42 years, doing research in trade policy, international economics, and exchange-rate theory. A visiting scholar in Latin America, Australia, Europe, and Asia, he helped create the University’s Latin American workshops and retired in 2004. Recipient of the 2008 Norman Maclean Faculty Award for teaching, he supervised 139 doctoral dissertations during his Chicago career. He is survived by his wife, Irene Glasner, AM’91; sons Michael Sjaastad, U-High’83, and John Sjaastad, U-High’85; two sisters; and four grandchildren.

1930s

Rose Betty (Baskind) Corey, PhB’31, died March 6 in Jasper, IN. She was 101. Corey was a substitute teacher in the Chicago Public Schools for 25 years. Survivors include two daughters, three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Max Chill, PhB’33, JD’35, an attorney, died February 17 in Chicago. He was 99. A WW II veteran, Chill practiced until his early 90s. He and brother Herman Chill, PhB’35, JD’37, ran a private practice covering appellate, business, and trial law before Max Chill turned to bankruptcy law, becoming an expert in Chapter 11 corporate reorganization law. He also was active in the local Jewish community. Survivors include three nieces and three nephews. 

Annette Baker Fox, AB’34, PhD’41, a political scientist, died December 26 in Greenwich, CT. She was 99. An international-affairs specialist, Fox was an associate research scholar at Columbia University’s Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. Author of The Power of Small States (University of Chicago Press, 1959), she was active in the League of Women Voters. Her husband, William T. R. Fox, AM’34, PhD’40, died in 1988. Survivors include a daughter, a son, and two grandsons.

Harvey Ancel, AB’39, of Denver, died April 1. He was 94. A WW II veteran, Ancel held a civilian position at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver. He also was active in his community, counseling children, helping the disabled find employment, and serving as a volunteer teacher at the Littleton Public Schools. In 2010 Ancel was named a Channel 7 Everyday Hero and a Channel 9 9Who Care Award winner for his work collecting and distributing children’s books and for helping needy schools. He is survived by his wife, Susan; two sons; and three grandchildren.

1940s

Carl Q. Christol, PhD’41, a political scientist, died February 22 in Santa Barbara, CA. He was 98. A WW II veteran, Christol advanced the field of international space law and helped establish human rights as a field of study. He taught at the Naval War College before joining the University of Southern California, where he served as political-science chair and retired as a distinguished professor emeritus. Christol was founding chair of the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s committee on international law and was vice president of the Court of Man Foundation, advocating for a tribunal to prosecute officials who violated human rights. In 1998 Christol received the International Institute of Space Law’s 1998 Lifetime Achievement Award. Survivors include a daughter.

Kurt Rorig, SB’42, died March 27 in Sko­kie, IL. He was 91. An organic chemist, Rorig spent his career with G. D. Searle & Company, now part of Pfizer, where he did research on products to control high blood pressure and on antihistamines. He rose to associate director of chemical research and acting director of medicinal chemistry, In retirement Rorig taught chemistry at Chicago universities. He is survived by his wife, Helen (Yonan) Rorig, AB’42; two daughters; a brother; and two grandchildren.

Rodney D. Briggs, AB’43, MBA’49, of Bethesda, MD, died January 22. He was 88. A WW II veteran, Briggs was an attorney with Southern Railway, where he led freight rate negotiations and argued before the US Supreme Court. After he retired, he spent two decades condensing Edward Gibbon’s seven-volume The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to a single volume. He is survived by his wife, Rosemary; six stepchildren; 11 step-grandchildren, including Timothy Splain, AB’06; and three step-great-grandchildren.

Lloyd Kozloff, SB’43, PhD’48, died March 10 in Fort Bragg, CA. He was 88. A WW II veteran, Kozloff taught in the University’s Biological Sciences Division before joining the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in 1963. A member of the “phage group,” a network of scientists including James Watson, PhB’46, SB’47, who study bacteriophages, Kozloff was the first to demonstrate how viruses transfer DNA to their offspring. A pioneer of modern virology, Kozloff cofounded an academic journal to cover the field. He later spent a decade as graduate division dean at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center. In 2004 Kozloff received the University of Chicago Medical and Biological Sciences Alumni Association’s Distinguished Service Award. He is survived by his wife, Bonnie; a daughter; three sons, including Daniel Kozloff, AB’72; two brothers, including Maxwell Kozloff, AB’53, AM’58; and six grandchildren.

Robert Summers, SB’43, died April 17 in Gladwyne, PA. He was 89. The economist was best known for his work on the Penn World Tables (international comparisons of prices and wages) and for conducting the International Comparison Project. He taught at Yale before joining the University of Pennsylvania in 1960, retiring in 1991. Summers was a distinguished fellow of the American Economics Association, and techniques developed by the International Comparison Project are regularly used by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He is survived by his wife, Anita Arrow Summers, AM’47; three sons; and seven grandchildren.

Richard Coopersmith, X’46, died January 10 in San Francisco. He was 83. An Air Force captain, Coopersmith was chief of the mental-hygiene clinic at Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base before launching a practice in New York, where he also was psychiatrist in chief of the Riverside Mental Health Association’s mental-hygiene clinic and a school psychiatrist. In 1965 he moved to San Francisco, where he served at St. Francis Hospital and spent 35 years as an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is survived by his wife, Nancy; a daughter; two sons; and five grandchildren.

Daniel C. Gerould, AB’46, AM’49, PhD’59, of New York, died February 13. He was 83. A modern-European drama scholar, Gerould was a distinguished professor of theater and comparative literature at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where he taught for more than 40 years. He helped introduce the plays of Polish dramatist Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz to English-speaking audiences, translating 21 of them, and received awards from the Los Angeles Drama Critics and the American Council of Polish Cultural Clubs. Gerould also edited the journal Slavic and East European Performance for nearly three decades and wrote the 12-volume Routledge/Harwood Polish and Eastern European Theatre Archive. He is survived by his wife, Jadwiga Kosicka.

Robert M. Rudolph, X’46, MBA’54, of Chicago, died May 2. He was 85. Rudolph was an accountant with Coopers & Lybrand and then with real-estate developer Metropolitan Structures. A member of the University of Chicago’s music-department visiting committee, Rudolph also sat on the board of the Chicago Opera Theater and supported many local music organizations. His first wife, Judith (Steiner) Rudolph, AM’53, died in 1991. He is survived by his wife, Sheila; three sons, Adam Rudolph, U-High’72, Daniel Rudolph, U-High’74, and Alexander Rudolph, U-High’78, SM’84, PhD’88; a stepdaughter; two brothers; and five grandchildren.

Leatrice Branch Madison, AM’47, of Shaker Heights, OH, died March 30. She was 89. Recipient of the NAACP’s Distinguished Service Plaque and the University’s 1994 Public Service Award, Madison moved with her family to Cleveland in 1954 and taught upper elementary school. An activist, she led 36 civic groups, including United Way Services and Cleveland Heights–University Heights Public Library. Madison was a founding member of Heights Citizens for Human Rights and Harambee: Services to Black Families, an organization to help teen parents learn child-rearing skills. Arts patrons, Madison and her husband received the Cleveland Foundation’s Frederick Harris Goff Philanthropic Service Award. She is survived by her husband, Robert; two daughters; a sister; three grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

Lincoln D. Metcalfe, SB’47, a chemist, died April 17 in LaGrange, IL. He was 91. A WW II veteran, Metcalfe was an expert in chromatography, the science of separating mixtures. A member of the American Chemical Society, the American Oil Chemists Society, and the Gas Chromatography Group of Chicago, Metcalfe most recently worked as research director with Akzo-Nobel. He is survived by his wife, Evelyn; a daughter; two grandsons; and two great-grandsons.

John M. Pfau, AB’47, AM’48, PhD’51, the first president of California State University, San Bernardino, died March 18 in Napa, CA. He was 93. Pfau helped found the institution, which opened in 1965 with approximately 300 students and 93 faculty and staff, and served as its president for two decades. A campus library was named in his honor. His wife, Antreen (McDonnell) Pfau, SB’40, SM’44, died in 2011. Survivors include two daughters.

Natalie W. Seglin, AB’47, AM’54, of Evanston, IL, died February 16. She was 84. A school social worker, Seglin worked at Highland Park High School, Winnetka’s Hubbard Woods Elementary School, and Skokie’s Lincoln Junior High School. She is survived by her husband, Melvin; a daughter; a son; a brother; and a granddaughter.

Paul Kriet, U-High’44, AB’48, died January 30 in Coronado, CA. He was 85. A WW II veteran, Kriet is survived by his wife, Shirley; two daughters; two sons; and eight grandchildren. 

Robert Lawrence Farwell, JD’49, died March 18 in Santa Fe. He was 90. A WW II veteran, Farwell drafted public-health legislation for the Illinois Department of Public Welfare, served on Adlai E. Stevenson’s presidential campaign committee, was executive director of Citizens for a Greater Chicago, and was the University of Chicago’s associate dean for planning and a lecturer in government and business. Winner of the Alumni Association’s 1963 Public Service Award, he concluded his career as executive director of Recovery Inc, retiring in 1987. In retirement he was a volunteer librarian at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art in Santa Fe. His wife, Carol (Yeomans) Farwell, PhB’46, died in 2011. Survivors include two daughters, two sons, eight grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

Eugene Patrick Kennedy, PhD’49, a biochemist, died September 22, 2011, in Cambridge, MA. He was 92. His landmark research on phospholipid biosynthesis is known as the “Kennedy pathway.” In 1959 Kennedy joined Harvard Medical School as a biological-chemistry professor. He received the University of Chicago Medical and Biological Sciences Alumni Association’s 1966 Distinguished Service Award, the 1976 Gairdner Foundation International Award, and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s 1992 Rose Award. Kennedy retired in 1993. Survivors include three daughters and six grandchildren.

1950s

Ulu Grosbard, AB’50, AM’52, a theater and film director, died March 18 in New York. He was 83. A Drama Desk and Obie Award winner, Grosbard was nominated for a Tony Award for his 1964 Broadway production of Frank Gilroy’s The Subject Was Roses. He later directed Arthur Miller’s The Price and the 1977 Broadway debut of David Mamet’s American Buffalo, starring Robert Duvall. Grosbard’s film work included True Confessions (1981), with Duvall and Robert DeNiro, and Falling in Love (1984), with DeNiro and Meryl Streep. He is survived by his wife, Rose Gregario.

Broman Haddon Massey, AB’50, a salesman, died March 10 in Houston. He was 93. A WW II veteran, Massey fought at Normandy and later earned an anthropology degree in Mexico City, where he met his wife, Luisa. He is survived by his wife, three daughters, a son, and five grandchildren.

Constance Perin, AB’50, AM’72, a cultural anthropologist who studied professional work and value systems, died March 18 in Westwood, MA. She was 82. Perin wrote four books, including Shouldering Risks: The Culture of Control in the Nuclear Power Industry (Princeton University Press, 2005), and since 1983 had been an independent scholar at MIT, where she was a study-group member in the Sloan School of Management’s International Program on Enhanced Nuclear Power Plant Safety. A Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Ford Foundation fellow, she received grants from the MacArthur Foundation’s program in global security and sustainability and from the National Science Foundation.

Olivia (To) Liang, AM’51, of Olympia Fields, IL, died January 9. She was 86. Liang cofounded the Yuan Liang Marketing Service, where she served as vice president for 40 years. The company was the first to compile demographic data for all of the country’s five-digit ZIP codes. She is survived by her husband, Yuan Liang, AM’51, and a daughter.

F. Sherwood Rowland, SM’51, PhD’52, a Nobel Prize–winning professor of chemistry, died March 10 in Corona del Mar, CA. He was 84. In 1974 Rowland discovered that chlorofluorocarbons, then common in aerosols, were depleting the ozone layer. Met with skepticism, his findings eventually led to the 1987 Montreal Protocol that halted CFC production—and to a 1995 Nobel. Rowland taught at Princeton and the University of Kansas before joining the University of California, Irvine, where he was the chemistry department’s inaugural chair. Rowland received the University of Chicago Alumni Association’s 1977 Professional Achievement Award, a 1989 honorary degree, and a 1997 Alumni Medal. He is survived by his wife, Joan (Lundberg) Rowland, PhB’46; a daughter; a son; and two grandchildren.

Robert R. Sokal, PhD’52, of South Setauket, NY, died April 9. He was 86. A cofounder of numerical taxonomy, Sokal was a distinguished professor emeritus at Stony Brook University, where he was an early member of the ecology and evolution department. He was president of the American Society of Naturalists and the International Federation of Classification Societies and in 1987 was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Editor of the American Naturalist, Sokal was also a Fulbright and Guggenheim fellow and received the American Association of Physical Anthropologists’ Charles R. Darwin Award for Lifetime Achievement. He retired in 1995. He is survived by his wife, Julie; a daughter; son David Sokal, AB’75, MBA’78; and four grandchildren, including Madeline Sokol, AB’12.

Marjorie Lesher Hunt, PhD’54, a chemist, died March 30 in Yakima, WA. She was 90. After studying with Nobel laureate Paul Flory at Cornell, Hunt did research at Washington State University. She retired to East Lansing, MI, and moved to Selah, WA, in 2011. Survivors include two daughters, a son, and two grandchildren.

Daniel J. Reed, PhD’58, an archivist, died February 7 in Villa Hills, KY. He was 89. A WW II veteran, Reed was chief historian of the National Portrait Gallery and assistant chief of the Library of Congress’s manuscript division before working at the National Archives as an assistant archivist for presidential libraries. A fellow of the Society of American Archivists, he directed the Historic St. Mary’s City museum for five years before retiring in 1985. Survivors include a daughter, three sons, and four grandchildren.

1960s

Rolland Carlson, MBA’60, died February 24 in Libertyville, IL. He was 79. Carlson started at Harris Bank as a teller and, after a stint in the Army, rose to executive vice president. After retiring in 1992, he led the consolidation of retirement communities into one of the country’s largest nonprofit retirement-association operations, Covenant Retirement Communities. He is survived by his wife, Janis; three daughters; four sons; brother Gordon Carlson, MBA’65; two sisters; 17 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

David B. Heller, MBA’62, died March 11 in Chicago. He was 80. Heller was a stockbroker with A. G. Becker & Co., rising to chief financial officer before being named president of Ralph W. Davis & Co. A past governor of the Midwest Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board Options Exchange, he founded Advisory Research Inc. in 1974. Heller later became a founding director of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation and served as board president of Chicago’s Francis W. Parker School, underwriting the Diane and David B. Heller Auditorium. He is survived by his wife, Diane; two daughters; two stepchildren; a sister; and six grandchildren.

Robert Wokler, AB’64, a historian, died of cancer July 30, 2006, in Cambridge, UK. He was 63. Wokler was a scholar of Enlightenment political thought and taught at the University of Manchester, where he became a reader in 1994. He then moved to Yale, where he was a senior lecturer in political science. In 2005 Wokler completed The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge University Press), published the next year. A posthumous collection of his essays, Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies (Princeton University Press), was published in April. Survivors include his mother and a sister.

Samuel Mayer Gedwiser, SM’59, PhD’65, of Brookline, MA, died October 13, 2010. He was 77. Gedwiser spent his career doing computer simulation modeling at Honeywell, where he was designated a fellow. He retired in 1995 after a spinal-cord injury. He is survived by his wife, Ellen Hertzmark; daughter Miriam Gedwiser, AB’04; and two grandchildren.

Melburn Thurman, AB’65, an anthropologist, died April 4 in Tucson, AZ. He was 70. An independent scholar of early North American Indian history, Thurman also published two novels. Survivors include a daughter and a son.

1970s

Michael Moffat, AM’69, PhD’76, an anthropologist, died November 26 in Chapel Hill, NC. He was 67. Moffat began his career at Rutgers University as an adjunct lecturer and rose to professor, serving as department chair and undergraduate and graduate director along the way. He later completed an ethnographic study of the social and sexual lives of undergraduates, Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture (Rutgers University Press, 1989). Before he retired as professor emeritus in 2007, he had started a long-term research project on Indian Americans in New Jersey. He is survived by his wife, Pamela; two sons; and a sister.

Donald James Jones, MBA’77, of Jamaica, NY, died of leukemia February 29. He was 64. A Vietnam veteran, Jones worked at Arthur Andersen & Co. before joining G. D. Searle & Company as a manager of worldwide financial systems. He later was named vice president of New York’s Bank Leumi and retired from TIAA-CREF as the company’s administrative systems officer. Jones also was president of the Long Island University Alumni Association. Survivors include a brother and three sisters.

1980s

James M. McMullan, MBA’80, died April 16 in Lake Forest, IL. He was 77. McMullan was a Merrill Lynch account executive before joining William Blair & Company, where he became a partner. Funding two joint professorships at the University of Mississippi between the University of Mississippi’s Center for Southern Culture and two other departments on campus, McMullan also directed the University of Mississippi Foundation and Advisory Council. He and his wife, Madeleine, endowed the cardiac-catheterization laboratory at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. He is survived by his wife; two daughters, including Carlette McMullan, MBA’87; two sisters; and two grandchildren.

Michael Perelstein, AM’81, MBA’86, of Rye, NY, died while biking March 17. He was 56. After working in international finance, he taught at Columbia and New York University’s business schools. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth (Borowitz) Perelstein, AM’79, AM’80; a daughter; and a son.

Nancy Jennings, MBA’88, died of breast cancer May 5, 2011, in San Jose, CA. She was 47. Jennings worked in high-tech business development, overseeing product launches at HP and Nishan Systems, later McDATA. In 2004 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent successful treatment before leaving her company to travel. She then ran the 2008 Obama campaign’s San Jose office and returned to work at Hitachi. Survivors include her father, two brothers, and three sisters.

1990s

Yaw Akuoko, AB’91, of Tallahassee, FL, died February 11. He was 47. Akuoko, an attorney, specialized in immigration law and commercial litigation, practicing in Florida and Georgia. He was admitted to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and was legal counsel and corporate secretary to aerospace company BCGneeds. He is survived by his wife, Ruth Bedell; a son; his parents; and siblings. 

2000s

Nina Foucher, AB’09, of New Haven, CT, died March 5. She was 25. Attending Chicago on a full scholarship, the South Side native was a student at Yale Law School, after which she hoped to improve accessibility to legal services. Foucher volunteered for and donated to Shults-Lewis Child and Family Services and Tabitha’s House, a Haitian orphanage. Survivors include her parents and two brothers.

Jacob Daniel Malone, AB’10, died March 5 in Brooklyn, NY. He was 24. While majoring in East Asian languages and civilization at Chicago, Malone launched three businesses: Stockyard magazine, Stockyard Media, and web-development firm Coil Applications. A classical pianist, Malone was a product manager at SecondMarket, a Manhattan alternative-investment firm. Survivors include his parents and two sisters.

Abhinav Kapur, a third-year medical student, died March 25 in Chicago. He was 24. As a Duke undergraduate, Kapur volunteered with organizations such as Engineers Without Borders. At Chicago he conducted humanitarian research in Hyderabad, India, and served on the executive board of West Rogers Park’s New Life Volunteering Society Free Health Clinic.