The University of Chicago Magazine

Faculty & Staff

Knox C. Hill, SB’30, AM’36, PhD’54, professor emeritus in philosophy, died February 3 in Hyde Park. He was 94. A WW II Army veteran, Hill became a full professor in 1954 after winning a Quantrell Award for undergraduate teaching. Helping to develop Chicago’s introductory humanities sequence, Hill also designed programs for the Universities of Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. His research focused on Aristotelian ethics, pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, and contemporary aesthetic theory. Survivors include three daughters, Virginia H. Carpenter, AB’60, AM’63, Joan Fee Dutton, AB’66, and Susan I. Burnett, AB’72, MAT’79; a son; three grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Mark M. Krug, PhD’60, a history professor and former director of the Graduate School of Education, died December 28 in Walnut Creek, CA. He was 89. Born in Vienna, Krug was a Zionist and moved as a young man to Palestine while his mother and sister stayed in Poland; they died in the Holocaust. A Civil War scholar, Krug taught history and headed the Zionist Organization of Chicago. Survivors include daughter Elyse Miller, MST’71, and four grandchildren.

Paul Josiah Schwab, professor emeritus in psychiatry, died October 25 in Naperville, IL. He was 72. After graduating from Baylor College of Medicine, he worked for two years at the National Institutes of Health, developing what remains the standard treatment for a rare blood disorder, Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia. Schwab had a private psychiatry practice and taught psychiatry at the Pritzker School of Medicine, where he won two Outstanding Teacher Awards. His alma mater, North Central College in Naperville, named its psychology research laboratory in Schwab’s honor. Survivors include his wife, Martha; three sons; and four grandchildren.

1920s

Elizabeth Elson Cohen, PhB’24, died July 25 in Newtown, PA. She was 100. Growing up on Chicago’s West Side, Cohen and seven siblings attended activities at Hull House, and its director, Jane Addams, helped Cohen obtain scholarships to study sociology at Chicago and at Yale Drama School, where she became one of two women on the faculty. In 1933 she moved to San Francisco, supervising a Federal Theater Project district. When her husband, Myer Cohen, worked for the United Nations following WW II, the family lived in Paris, Geneva, and Belgrade. Settling in New York in 1956, Cohen was a member of the American National Theater Academy and represented the World Federation for Mental Health at the U.N. Survivors include a daughter and son.

1930s

Anna Adelaide Stafford Henriques, SM’31, PhD’33, a mathematician, died November 28 in Baileys Crossroads, VA. She was 99. While earning her master’s at Chicago, Henriques was galvanized by a lecture on topology. She wanted to study with Oswald Veblen, a pioneer in the field, at Princeton. Princeton excluded women, so she persuaded Veblen to let her work with him at the new Institute for Advanced Study; she taught high school in the mornings and studied with Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel in the afternoons. Henriques later taught at the University of Nebraska, the University of Utah, and the College of Santa Fe. She continued to teach informally—and to bowl—into her 90s. Survivors include a son, two grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Jack R. Greenfield, SB’35, a chemist, died September 4 in Northfield, IL. He was 91. Greenfield received multiple patents, was published in professional journals, and set up business subsidiaries in Asia. A pianist, he learned piano repair after retiring and wrote a book on the history of Midwest piano manufacturing. Survivors include daughter Hazel G. Greenfield, AM’74, and son Laurence A. Greenfield, MBA’77.

Howard Penn Hudson, AB’35, a publisher, died January 1 in Poughkeepsie, NY. He was 91. Hudson ran the Newsletter on Newsletters, an industry paper for newsletter publishers. He began as a reporter in Chicago and served in the Army during WW II. Hudson also compiled Hudson’s Washington Directory, a guide to the Washington press corps still published today. His first wife, Mary Elizabeth, died in 1986. Survivors include his wife, Elaine; four stepchildren; and four grandchildren.

Clarissa Woodruff Paltzer Mancill, X’35, an artist, died July 22, 2004, in Alabama. She was 88. Survivors include her husband, John; four children; 12 grandchildren; and 18 great-grandchildren.

Herbert Charles Brown, SB’36, PhD’38, winner of a Nobel Prize in chemistry, died December 19 in Lafayette, IN. He was 92. A professor at Purdue University, Brown shared a 1979 Nobel for his work in developing a class of chemicals known as organoboranes, useful in manufacturing agricultural compounds and pharmaceuticals such as Prozac and Lipitor. Brown dropped out of school at 14 to run the family hardware store in Chicago after his father died. He attended night school and sold shoes by day while earning an associate’s degree, then won a scholarship to the University. Survivors include his wife, Sarah Baylen Brown, SB’37, and a son.

Lester G. Seligman, AB’39, PhD’47, a political-science professor, died November 2 in Urbana, IL. He was 86. Seligman taught at Chicago for five years, then at the University of Oregon and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Seligman studied the presidency and political parties and served as a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution and Israel’s Weizmann Institute. The Presidency Research Group of the American Political Science Association named an award in his honor.

1940s

David Aaron Salzberg, SB’40, a biochemist, died January 2 in San Mateo, CA. He was 84. Salzberg did medical research after earning a doctorate from Stanford and received a Scholar in Cancer Award from the American Cancer Society. He also pursued real-estate ventures in San Mateo and brewed apricot brandy from his own trees. Survivors include his companion, Ceil; four children; 16 grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.

Amelia Baer Barnard, AM’41, a social worker, died November 21 in Tempe, AZ. She was 88. Barnard began her career in New York City and the San Francisco area, then taught social work at Indiana University for eight years. She continued to teach and also created social-service programs in Denver before retiring in Arizona. Survivors include a sister.

Jackson Mac Low, AA’41, a poet, composer, and performance artist, died December 8 in Manhattan. He was 82. A leader in the experimental movement of the 1950s, Mac Low wrote poetry, musical compositions, plays, and multimedia works that blurred the boundary between language and music. His work sprang from his interest in randomness and sound combinations. Author of 12 poetry books, Mac Low won the 1999 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. He often collaborated with his wife, poet and composer Anne Tardos, who survives him, along with two children and a grandchild.

William A. Chapin, AB’42, of Virginia, died December 4. He was 84. Born in Chicago, Chapin served in the Army during WW II. He was a foreign-service officer in Germany, Vietnam, Laos, and England. Chapin and his wife were active in efforts to prevent and treat mental illness. He loved his old farmstead in Gore, VA, and deeded it to remain open space. Survivors include his wife; a daughter; two sons; two brothers; a sister, Ruth Chapin Fort, AB’45; and two grandchildren.

Rosemary Peacock Tozer, SB’44, of Flossmoor, IL, died in spring 2003. She was 79. She is survived by four children, including son Thomas A. Tozer, AB’82, AM’85, and eight grandchildren.

Mary William Brady, PhD’47, a nun and former president of the College of St. Catherine, died January 10 in Saint Paul, MN. She was 98. Brady earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota, then joined the Sisters of St. Joseph Carondelet. She taught English at the College of St. Catherine, serving as its president from 1955 to 1961.

Frank W. Emmerson, MBA’47, a statistician, died June 17 in Ottawa, Ontario. He was 81. Emmerson joined the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in 1943 and worked as coordinator of financial statistics. He and his wife, Lorraine, were named Ottawa Citizens of the Year in 1983 for their volunteer work with refugees. Survivors include a brother and sister.

Alan Saks, AB’47, a businessman and social activist, died January 4 in Chicago. He was 77. Saks headed Chicago’s Saxon Paint and Hardware, founded by his grandmother in 1914. After Army service, Saks expanded four stores into a 50-store chain catering to do-it-yourself home improvement. He championed local neighborhoods, remaining in areas that other retailers fled, worked against the Vietnam War, advocated integration, and volunteered for political campaigns, including Barack Obama’s 2004 Senate bid. A Columbia College trustee, he was on the state board of the American Civil Liberties Union. Survivors include his wife, Esther; four daughters; two sisters; and two grandchildren.

Otis Dudley Duncan, PhD’49, a social scientist, died November 16 in Santa Barbara, CA. He was 82. An early proponent of quantitative sociology, Duncan used statistics to show that education played a greater role than social class in determining a boy’s future social status. Duncan later did similar studies of how race and intelligence affect success. He taught at Penn State and Wisconsin and returned to Chicago as associate director of the Population Research and Training Center; he was later named a professor of human ecology. Duncan also taught at the universities of Michigan and Arizona and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Survivors include his wife, Beatrice, and a daughter.

1950s

Irving Horwitz, AB’51, AM’54, died November 16 in Chicago. He was 78. A WW II Army veteran, Horwitz served for 23 years as an administrator with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He also taught political science at the SSA, DePaul University, and Northeastern University. Retiring in 1986, he volunteered with the Chicago Historical Society and other organizations. Survivors include his wife, Reva “Mickey” Horwitz, AM’56; two sons; and two grandchildren.

John C. Freeman, PhD’52, of Houston, TX, died November 18. He earned his doctorate in meteorology. Survivors include his wife, Marjorie.

Hisham Sharabi, AM’48, PhD’53, a Palestinian-American intellectual and activist, died January 13 in Beirut. He was 77. Sharabi spent his career teaching European intellectual history and political science at Georgetown University, where in 1975 he and colleagues formed the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. He also founded the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development, which houses the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine. Sharabi supported the cause of Palestinians and the rights of women in the Arab world. Survivors include two daughters, two brothers, two sisters, and three grandchildren.

1960s

Enrique Alberto Arias, AM’66, a musicologist and pianist, died of complications from colon cancer December 1. He was 63. A Chicago native, son of the consul general for Panama in Chicago, he studied piano performance at DePaul University, musicology at Chicago, and music history at Northwestern. In the 1970s and 1980s he performed as a pianist. Arias also headed the former Chicago Conservatory of Music, joining the DePaul faculty in 1993. He served as president of Ars Musica Chicago, a music ensemble.

Anthony Gergiannakis, X’67, spiritual leader for Greek Orthodox Christians in seven western states, died of Burkitt’s lymphoma December 25 in San Francisco. He was 69. Born in Crete, Gergiannakis studied theology in Turkey and was ordained in 1960. Named the first bishop for the Diocese of San Francisco in 1979, he was elevated in 1977 to metropolitan, roughly equivalent to a Roman Catholic archbishop. Known as the “building bishop,” he consecrated new churches at a rate of about one per year. He also developed a large folk-dancing festival and an Orthodox seminary in Berkeley, CA. Survivors include two sisters.

1970s

Edwin Garth Brown, PhD’70, a social worker, died December 11 in Salt Lake City. He was 73. Brown graduated from Brigham Young University, then went on a mission to France for the Church of Latter Day Saints. A professor and dean at the University of Utah’s graduate school of social work, he founded the Highland Ridge Hospital, an inpatient psychiatry and substance-abuse clinic in Midvale, UT. He was active in his church and a commissioner of the Salt Lake County Housing Authority. Survivors include his wife, Carma; six children; two brothers; and 11 grandchildren.

Vincent Paul Gurucharri, MD’71, a surgeon, died December 9, 2003, from complications following a bone-marrow transplant, in Saint Louis, MO. He was 58. Gurucharri served as a surgeon at the U.S. Naval Medical Center in Great Lakes, IL, and then opened a private practice in general thoracic surgery in Columbia, MO. He joined Boone Hospital Center there in 1980 and was its chief of staff from 1996 to 1998. He received an AMA Physician Recognition Award in 1985. Survivors include his wife, Jean; his mother; three daughters; and ten brothers and sisters.

Bernard Ray Spillman, AM’71, a teacher and administrator with the Chicago Public Schools, died December 19 in Chicago. He was 70. Spillman began a 38-year career in education after Army service in Germany. Starting as a teacher in Chicago, he was later principal and assistant superintendent. Spillman served as president of African American social organizations, including the Druids and the Chicago Assembly. He visited every continent except Antarctica. Survivors include his wife, Jacqueline Spillman, MAT’59; two daughters; a brother; and a sister.

Michael Donaghy, AM’78, a poet and musician, died suddenly September 16 in London. He was 50. Born in the Bronx to Irish immigrants, Donaghy attended Fordham before studying at Chicago, where he was poetry editor for Chicago Review and played flute with Irish bands. His first book, Slivers, was published in 1985, the year he moved to London; later collections won the Whitbread and Forward prizes. Known for his mischievousness and charm, Donaghy recited from memory in performances and workshops. Survivors include his wife, Maddy, and a son.