Faculty and staff

Hellmut Fritzsche, the Louis Block Professor Emeritus in Physics, of Tucson, AZ, died June 17. He was 91. An experimental physicist who made major contributions to modern electronics, Fritzsche chaired the Department ofPhysics from 1977 to 1986 and oversaw the building of the Kersten Physics Teaching Center. His experimental research on amorphous semiconductors led to technological advances in computer memory, solar panels, and what would become flat-screen televisions. A member of the UChicago faculty for nearly four decades, he was also vice president of United Solar Corporation and a consultant for Energy Conversion Devices. His honors included the Alexander von Humboldt Award and the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize. His wife, Sybille Fritzsche, JD’68, PhD’95, died June 17 (see below). He is survived by two daughters, Susanne Fritzsche Olkkola, LAB’81, and Katja Fritzsche, LAB’88; two sons, Peter Fritzsche, LAB’77, and Thomas Fritzsche, LAB’80; and eight grandchildren.

Kali Charan Bahl, associate professor emeritus, of Chicago, died March 29. He was 90. Bahl joined the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations in 1967, shortly after its inception as a formal program of study at the University. Over his 30-year career, he led the development of the department’s language program, helping establish the study of Hindi at UChicago. A specialist in the Hindi, Rajasthani, Munda, and Punjabi languages, he authored several linguistics reference works and guides, including A Reference Grammar of Hindi (1967), as well as numerous articles on Indian literature and folklore. He is survived by his wife, Vimla; a daughter, Vipula Bahl Purcell, LAB’81; two sons, Vinit Bahl, LAB’76, and Chandra Shekhar Bahl, LAB’83, AB’88; and five grandchildren.

Louis Cohen, SB’48, MD’53, professor emeritus of cardiology at UChicago Medicine, died January 10 in Chicago. He was 89. In his six decades as a researcher, physician, and teacher at the University, Cohen studied the chemistry of compounds now used to treat a range of cardiac problems, helped create the medical center’s first coronary care unit, and designed the Department of Medicine’s course on clinical pathophysiology and therapeutics. He also contributed to advances in treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy. He was recognized by the Department of Medicine with a Distinguished Service Award in 2007. His wife, Emili Cohen, CER’84, died in 2013. He is survived by a daughter, Ruth C. Kubicek, LAB’73; two sons, Curtis R. Cohen, LAB’71, and Fredric A. Cohen, LAB’78; eight grandchildren, including Naomi S. Cody, AB’99; and six great-grandchildren.

Bernard S. Silberman, professor emeritus of political science, died April 28 in Chicago. He was 87. Silberman taught at Oberlin College, the University of Arizona, and Duke University before joining UChicago in 1975, where he served from 1978 to 1981 as associate dean of the Graduate Division of the Social Sciences and master of the Social Sciences Collegiate Division and twice chaired the Department of Political Science. An expert on Japanese government and the bureaucratic state, he authored such books as Ministers of Modernization: Elite Mobility in the Meiji Restoration, 1868–1873 (1964) and Cages of Reason: The Rise of the Rational State in France, Japan, the United States, and Great Britain (1993). He is survived by his wife, Pauline; three daughters, including Andrea J. Silberman, LAB’82; and three grandchildren.

Nicholas Rudall, professor emeritus of classics and founding artistic director of Court Theatre, died June 19 in Tucson, AZ. He was 78. A scholar and renowned translator of Greek drama, Rudall taught in the Department of Classics from 1966 until his retirement four decades later. As Court Theatre’s artistic director from 1972 to 1994, he developed the institution from an amateur community-based theater into a professional company, overseeing the establishment of its permanent home on UChicago’s campus in 1981. His published translations and adaptations included ancient works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, as well as modern texts by Christopher Marlowe, Henrik Ibsen, and Georges Feydeau. He is survived by a daughter and extended family.

Paula Jaudes, professor of pediatrics at UChicago Medicine, died June 16 in Chicago. She was 71. A member of the Department of Pediatrics since 1975, Jaudes became medical director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services in 1993 and also served as president and CEO of La Rabida Children’s Hospital from 1996 to 2011. In addition to her role as associate director of outreach at UChicago’s Center for Global Health, she served the American Academy of Pediatrics as an executive committee member of the Council on Foster Care, Adoption, and Kinship Care. She is survived by a sister and extended family.

Daniel Luchins, associate professor emeritus of psychiatry, died May 2 in Chicago. He was 69. During his 25 years on the UChicago faculty, Luchins served as chief of adult psychiatry, director of public psychiatry, and director of both the Geriatrics Psychiatry Clinic and the Center for Public Mental Health Services Research. He was also a staff psychiatrist at Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center and its Auburn-Gresham Community Based Outpatient Clinic. His research included studies of depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, and human brain development.

Trustee

Robert H. Malott, University of Chicago trustee emeritus, died April 4 in Palo Alto, CA. He was 91. A World War II US Navy veteran, Malott joined the manufacturing firm FMC Corporation in 1952, serving as CEO from 1971 until his retirement in 1991. An active civic leader and philanthropist, he served on Argonne National Laboratory’s governing board, chaired the Hoover Institution’s board of overseers, was chair of the board of the National Museum of Natural History, and was a life director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Botanic Garden. He is survived by three daughters and six grandchildren.

1940s

Eunice “Ruddy” Hale Smith, AB’43, died February 4 in Lake Forest, IL. She was 95. Smith was a reporter for the Chicago Daily News during World War II and turned her attention to civic and charitable work in the 1960s. She served on the boards of Planned Parenthood, Lake Forest College, Hull House, and Know Your Chicago, a UChicago program in civic awareness and participation now sponsored by the University’s Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. She is survived by three daughters, a son, and eight grandchildren.

Olivia (Coolidge) Dworkin, AB’45, died April 28, 2017, in Meredith, NH. She was 94. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Dworkin taught political economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where she met her husband. They later ran a home for troubled Jewish youth in Germantown, PA. For more than 25 years she was the owner of Roseway Books, a used bookstore in Boston. Her husband, Harry W. Dworkin, AM’52, died in 1996. She is survived by a daughter, two sons, a brother, and three grandchildren.

Gerald Reaven, AB’47, SB’50, MD’53, died February 12 in Stanford, CA. He was 89. An endocrinologist and a professor emeritus at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Reaven established insulin resistance as a cause of type 2 diabetes and demonstrated its role in a group of metabolic abnormalities that he called “Syndrome X,” associated with cardiovascular disease. Honors for his research included the Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement from the American Diabetes Association and the William S. Middleton Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs. He is survived by his wife, Eve (Perl) Reaven, PhD’54; two daughters; and a son, Peter D. Reaven, MD’84.

Merrill A. Freed, AB’49, JD’53, died January 29 in Highland Park, IL. He was 88. After one year in India on a Fulbright Scholarship and two years in the US Army, Freed spent his career as a lawyer with the Chicago firm D’Ancona & Pflaum, now merged with Seyfarth Shaw. He is survived by his wife, Janet (Bezark) Freed, LAB’49, AM’58; two daughters; two sons; three brothers, including Stanley A. Freed, PhB’49, and Frederick D. Freed, AB’57; and five grandchildren.

George K. Hendrick Jr., AB’49, MBA’49, died February 19 in Chicago. He was 94. After serving in the US Army during World War II, Hendrick became a partner in the investment banking firm Blunt, Ellis & Simmons. He went on to become a founding partner in the venture capital firm Frontenac and later founded the merchant banking firm Hendrick, Urgo. He is survived by three daughters; a son, George K. Hendrick III, MBA’93; 11 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Carl Vespa, AB’49, died March 8 in Chicago. He was 87. Vespa worked at Argonne National Laboratory, Honeywell, and Bell Labs. In 1963 he founded NanoFast, which manufactures precision electronic scientific measurement equipment. Survivors include his wife, Hazel M. Vespa, AM’68; three stepdaughters; two stepsons; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

1950s

Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, AM’51, PhD’56, died March 2 in Providence, RI. She was 87. A leading scholar of the English Renaissance who advanced the study of 17th-century women’s writing, Lewalski was the first woman to receive tenure and hold an endowed chair in English at Brown University and the first to do the same at Harvard University, where she taught since 1982. An authority on John Milton, she published such works as Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (1979) and Writing Women in Jacobean England (1993). Her husband, Kenneth F. Lewalski, AM’52, PhD’60, died in 2006. She is survived by a son.

Peter G. Peterson, MBA’51, died March 20 in New York City. He was 91. Peterson served as an assistant on international economic affairs and commerce secretary under President Richard M. Nixon before becoming chair and CEO of the Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers in 1973. He cofounded the alternative investments firm the Blackstone Group in 1985. In several books and through his support of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, he promoted arguments for fiscal responsibility and limits to federal entitlement spending. He is survived by his wife, Joan Ganz Cooney, a daughter, four sons, a brother, and nine grandchildren.

Boyd R. “Bob” Burkhardt, 12GC’52, died May 7 in Tucson, AZ. He was 84. After serving in the US Air Force as chief of surgery at Lajes Air Base in the Azores, Burkhardt moved with his family to Tucson and established a surgical facility next to the Tucson Medical Center. A specialist in plastic surgery for nearly four decades, he served as president of both the Pima County Medical Society and the Rocky Mountain Plastic Surgery Society. He is survived by two daughters, a son, and five grandchildren.

Sheldon M. Gordon, PhB’52, died September 28 in North Palm Beach, FL. He was 88. After a stint as a runner on the Chicago Board of Trade, Gordon became a real estate developer who helped pioneer entertainment retail. Beginning in the early 1970s, his major development projects were innovative retail complexes such as Pearlridge Center in Aiea, HI; the Beverly Center in Los Angeles; and the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. He is survived by his wife, Christine; two daughters; two sons; a sister; and six grandchildren.

Frank Ezra Levy, AM’54, of Fort Lee, NJ, died April 23, 2017. He was 86. A professional cellist and composer, Levy taught for a time at Brooklyn College and the New School. After stints with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Feldman Chamber Music Society, and the Halifax Symphony Orchestra, he became principal cellist at Radio City Music Hall, where he remained for more than four decades while also playing with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic. He is survived by two daughters, a stepdaughter, a stepson, a brother, and three step-grandchildren.

Philip M. Roth, AM’55, died May 22 in New York City. He was 85. One of the preeminent American novelists of the second half of the 20th century, Roth won the National Book Award for his debut collection, Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories (1959), and again for Sabbath’s Theater (1995); achieved literary celebrity with the best-selling novel Portnoy’s Complaint (1969); and later received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 1997 novel American Pastoral. Other honors included the National Humanities Medal, the National Medal of the Arts, and the Man Booker International Prize. (See “Talking Back.”)

Lawrence Kaplan, PhD’56, died March 6 in Washington, DC. He was 91. A botanist who specialized in the origin and cultivation of beans in the Americas, Kaplan taught at Roosevelt University for nearly a decade before becoming a founding member in 1965 of the University of Massachusetts Boston campus, helping to start its biology department. He taught there until his retirement in 1995 and served as editor of the journal Economic Botany. He is survived by three daughters, including Martha Kaplan, AM’81, PhD’88; and two granddaughters, including E. Kaplan-Kelly, AB’14.

Franz C. Snyder, AB’56, died April 25 in Berkeley, CA. He was 81. A US Army veteran, Snyder taught English at Richmond High School in Richmond, CA, and Albany High School in Albany, CA. For more than 20 years he was a volunteer usher for the Aurora Theatre Company, the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances. His wife, Mary Ann “Zoe” (Anday) Snyder, LAB’52, AB’56, died in 1982. He is survived by two daughters, a sister, and two grandchildren.

Arthur L. Waldman, AB’56, of Pinecrest, FL, died March 26. He was 81. After earning his medical degree, Waldman became the first neurologist in Middletown, CT, where he served as chief of neurology at Middlesex Hospital for 31 years. An assistant clinical professor at the University of Connecticut Medical School, he also taught in its affiliated family practice residency at Middlesex Hospital. He is survived by his wife, Phyllis; three sons, including Brian Pearce Waldman, AB’86, MBA’87; a sister; and seven grandchildren.

Raymond K. Baker, AB’57, AM’60, of Wilmette, IL, died December 26. He was 82. Baker taught philosophy at the City Colleges of Chicago and worked as a criminal defense attorney. In retirement he ushered for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is survived by his wife, Deborah; three sons, including Aaron Evan Baker, AB’81; and three grandchildren.

Keith D. Hage, PhD’57, of Leduc, Alberta, died December 11. He was 91. Professor emeritus of geography at the University of Alberta, Hage taught there from 1967 until his retirement in 1985. He studied urban meteorology and prairie weather patterns and was a fellow of the American Meteorological Society. He is survived by his wife, Ollie; two daughters; a son; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Robert H. Gerstein, JD’59, of Highland Park, IL, died March 29. He was 82. A real estate lawyer who also worked as a developer in the Chicago metropolitan area, Gerstein started his legal career at the firm Yates, Holleb & Mickelson, which later became Holleb, Gerstein & Glass. Over decades he helped develop office, retail, and residential projects on Michigan Avenue and in Lincoln Park while promoting low- and moderate-income housing in Hyde Park, Highland Park, and the University of Illinois at Chicago area. He is survived by his wife, Helene (Paul) Gerstein, AB’58; a daughter; two sons, including Mark D. Gerstein, JD’84; and eight grandchildren.

Germain G. Grisez, PhD’59, of Emmitsburg, MD, died February 1. He was 88. Professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Mount St. Mary’s University, Grisez previously taught at Georgetown University and Campion College and wrote extensively on Catholic theology. In Contraception and the Natural Law (1964) and other writings, he defended the Catholic Church’s teachings on contraception. His three-volume work The Way of the Lord Jesus (1983–1997) assembled teachings in moral theology and helped articulate what became known as the new natural law theory. Survivors include three sons, 12 grandchildren, and 23 great-grandchildren.

Judith E. Rosenblatt, AB’59, of Jacksonville, FL, died December 26. She was 79. Rosenblatt taught elementary school in Chicago and Centralia, MO, before working as an editor for state and local boards of the League of Women Voters of Minnesota. She later embarked on a two-decade career at the University of Minnesota Immigration History Research Center. She is survived by two sons and eight grandchildren.

1960s

John Cashman, SB’60, died March 3 in Wilmington, NC. He was 79. A diplomat of the American Urological Association and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Cashman was the head of urology at the US Naval Hospital in Charleston, SC, before moving to Wilmington in 1972 to join the private practice Hanover Urological, where he remained until his retirement. He also served as president of the New Hanover-Pender County Medical Society and as chair of the Department of Surgery at the New Hanover Regional Medical Center. He is survived by his wife, Diane Cashman, AB’60; a daughter; a son; two sisters; a brother; and six grandchildren.

Miriam D. Balanoff, AB’61, JD’63, of Chicago, died in September 2017. She was 91. After operating a storefront legal practice in Chicago and teaching a course on women and law at local colleges, Balanoff was elected in 1978 to the first of two terms in the Illinois House of Representatives, where her advocacy for economic and social causes included proposing legislation to protect workers facing plant closings. For 14 years, beginning in 1986, she served as a judge on the Cook County Circuit Court. Her husband, Clement Balanoff, PhB’49, SB’58, died in 2002. She is survived by a daughter, M. Jane Balanoff, AB’76; two sons; nine grandchildren, including Clement Balanoff, LAB’04, and Monica Balanoff, LAB’06; and a great-grandchild.

Georgia L. Helmer, SB’63, PhD’82, died October 21 in Asheville, NC. She was 76. A biochemist, Helmer worked as a research associate at North Carolina State University. She later became a patent examiner with the US Patent and Trademark Office, retiring in 2012 after more than a decade of service. She is survived by her husband, Hollis D. Smith; two sisters; and a brother.

Jack K. Balcombe Jr., AB’65 (Class of 1966), died December 30 in Lorimor, IA. He was 73. Balcombe worked as a psychologist in Chicago before he and his wife purchased a farm near Lorimor in the late 1970s. He was a social worker at nursing homes in Afton and Creston, IA. He is survived by his wife, Sarah Frank; two daughters; a sister, Joan Balcombe, MD’80; and a grandson.

Jerry Lee Schoemann, MBA’65, died January 25 in Austin, TX. He was 78. Schoemann earned a degree in mechanical engineering before studying business at UChicago. He led a long career as a business professional in communications and marketing. He is survived by his wife, Ginger; three daughters; a son; a sister; and 11 grandchildren.

Floy Agnes Naranjo Lee, PhD’66, died March 6 in Santa Fe, NM. She was 95. Lee was a hematology technician on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, NM, before pursuing her doctorate in zoology. An expert in cytogenetics and radiation biology, she worked for a time at Argonne National Laboratory, going on to serve as the director of the Department of Tissue Culture at the Pasadena Foundation for Medical Research, a senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a radiobiologist in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Mammalian Biology Group. She helped found the American Indian Science and Engineering Society and was a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo. She is survived by a daughter and two grandchildren.

Andrea Farkas Patenaude, AB’67, of Brookline, MA, died January 29. She was 71. A clinical psychologist and a leader in the field of psychosocial oncology, Patenaude began her career in the Department of Psychiatry at Boston Children’s Hospital and later worked as a clinician at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she served as director of the Jimmy Fund Clinic from 2000 to 2011 and then as director of psychology research and clinical service in the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention until her retirement in 2017. She was also an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an attending psychologist and psychosocial researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is survived by her husband, Leonard; a daughter; and a sister.

Sybille Fritzsche, JD’68, PhD’95, of Tucson, AZ, died June 17. She was 87. A civil rights lawyer in Chicago for nearly three decades, Fritzsche served as a legal counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union and later as executive director of the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Equal Rights under Law. In addition to teaching law at DePaul University and Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, she earned a doctorate as a scholar of Chinese history. Her husband, Hellmut Fritzsche, the Louis Block Professor Emeritus in Physics, died June 17 (see above). She is survived by two daughters, Susanne Fritzsche Olkkola, LAB’81, and Katja Fritzsche, LAB’88; two sons, Peter Fritzsche, LAB’77, and Thomas Fritzsche, LAB’80; and eight grandchildren.

Margery Smith, AM’68, PhD’70, died March 14 in St. Paul, MN. She was 90. A member of the Sisters of St. Joseph and a professor emerita of English at the College of St. Catherine, Smith taught on the English faculty there from 1968 to 1993 before serving as St. Catherine university archives director until her retirement in 2011. She founded the Antonian Scholars Honors Program at St. Catherine and received the 2010–11 Alumnae Award. She is survived by extended family.

1970s

Amos R. Bien, AB’73, died of cancer November 19 in Williamsburg, VA. He was 66. A population ecologist specializing in responsible and sustainable tourism, Bien was founder and CEO of Rara Avis Rainforest Lodge and Reserve in Costa Rica. He worked for the United Nations Environmental Programme, was a founding member of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, taught sustainable tourism at the Universidad de Cooperación Internacional, and served as lead assessor for the international nonprofit Forest Stewardship Council. He is survived by three children, two sisters, and four grandchildren.

Ivan F. Rivera, AM’73, died February 11 in Washington, DC. He was 71. An economist with the World Bank Group, he also served as a member of its board of directors. He taught macroeconomics and microeconomics at the University of Lima and was industry minister of Peru in 1983, later serving as that nation’s minister of economy and finance. He is survived by his wife, Blanca; two daughters; and a son.

Eli Leon, AM’79, died March 6 in Emery-ville, CA. He was 82. A psychotherapist in private practice in Oakland, CA, for a time, Leon started collecting African American quilts in the mid-1980s and became a prominent curator of the self-taught art, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989 to conduct research and expand his collection. Known as a champion of quiltmaker Rosie Lee Tompkins, he organized numerous exhibitions featuring his own collection and also loaned works by Tompkins to the Whitney Museum of American Art for the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Survivors include a sister and extended family.

1980s

Jeffrey C. Boulden, AB’82, died January 15 in Peoria, IL. He was 57. Boulden served underprivileged clients for more than two decades as an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation. An accomplished cook, he also enjoyed blues and jazz music and traveling to New Orleans. He is survived by his father and a sister.

2000s

Erin Ashly Reynolds, AM’02, died March 30 after a sudden illness in Branson West, MO. She was 40. A licensed clinical social worker, Reynolds operated her own counseling practice, SEMS Treatment Services, and was executive director of the Family Access Center for Excellence of Boone County. She was also an assistant clinical professor at the University of Missouri. Licensed as a minister in 2001, Reynolds was copastor, with her husband, of Fifth Street Christian Church in Columbia, MO, from 2013 to 2017. Survivors include her husband, Marcus; a daughter; a son; her mother and father; two grandmothers; and two brothers.

Zeke R. Upshaw, LAB’09, died March 26 of a sudden cardiac event in Grand Rapids, MI. He was 26. A professional basketball player, Upshaw spent his NCAA career with the Illinois State University Redbirds and the Hofstra University Pride. He was in his second season with the Grand Rapids Drive, an NBA G League team affiliated with the Detroit Pistons. Survivors include his mother.

2010s

Alan M. Swartz, SM’15, died unexpectedly in his sleep May 12 in Vernon Hills, IL. He was 31. Swartz was working toward his PhD in the Department of Chemistry. He was a research assistant in the laboratory of Jared Lewis, former assistant professor of chemistry, and focused on the development of new catalysts. He is survived by a daughter, his mother and father, two sisters, and a grandmother.