Bruce Wessels, Walter P. Murphy Professor Emeritus of Materials Science and Engineering and former chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), passed away on April 7, 2024. His work was pivotal in the study of thin film and nanostructures for electronic, magnetic, and photonic materials.

Wessels spent nearly 47 years at the McCormick School of Engineering – working his way up from assistant professor to chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He was instrumental in expanding Northwestern’s Materials Science and Engineering to include electronic materials. While at Northwestern, he mentored over 50 doctoral and post-doc students, authored over 400 articles, and held 21 U.S. patents.

He completed his education in metallurgy and materials science at the University of Pennsylvania and then his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He is survived by his wife, children and eight grandchildren.  

McCormick School obituary.

David Fulton Bishop, 86, Librarian Emeritus and Northwestern’s Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian 1992-2006, passed away on November 28, 2023. He was predeceased by his wife, Nancy, of 63 years. He is survived by his two children and 5 grandchildren. 

Prior to earning his library sciences degree, he earned degrees in music education and string bass performance, playing in the U.S. Air Force Orchestra. His interests included gardening, supporting the Chicago Botanic Garden, and Northwestern sports.

His library career spanned over forty years, where he served as University Librarian at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Director of Libraries at the University of Georgia, and Assistant Director of Technical Services at the University of Chicago. While at Northwestern, he oversaw huge growth in the university’s collections, including a dramatic increase in electronic resources. He was pivotal as a fundraiser for the library, effectively doubling the endowment resources available for the library. Additionally, he took over administrative responsibility for University Press and paved the way for Information Commons at Northwestern. He was the recipient of the Alumni Achievement Award in Library Science from The Catholic University of American and Academic Library Staff Member of the Year by the North Suburban Library System.  

Obituary.

Northwestern University Retirement Profile.

Jesuit Father James F. Bresnahan, 96, a professor of medical ethics, died Oct. 23, 2018, in Weston, Mass. In1981 he began directing a program in medical ethics and humanities at Northwestern’s medical school. Born in Springfield, Mass., he attended Holy Cross and Harvard Law School and was ordained in 1959. He taught theology at Fairfield University, where he pronounced his final vows in 1965. A year later he began doctoral studies at Yale, taught for two years at Regis University, then joined the faculty of Jesuit School of Theology and the University of Chicago’s School of Divinity. In Chicago he met a group of Northwestern doctors who wanted to explore ethical issues in medical practice. Fr. Bresnahan published more than 30 scholarly articles and book chapters. In 2002 he went back to New England to live at Boston College; later he had an appointment at Dartmouth’s Medical School. Obituary. 

Laurie Brown, 96, a theoretical physicist and historian of quantum field theory and elementary particle physics, passed away Oct 25, 2019. He received a doctorate at Cornell under Richard Feynman and joined NU in 1950. Laurie spent academic years at the Institute for Advanced Study, at the University of Vienna, and as a Fulbright Scholar in Italy. From 1960 to 1970 he was a consultant for Argonne National Laboratory. He edited several books on Feynman and wrote mainly on the history of 20th century physics after World War II, especially nuclear and particle physics. During the 1990s a focus of his work was the history of modern physics in Japan. Laurie was one of the founders of the Forum on History of Physics of the American Physical Society and twice was chair of the forum. In 1961 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Obituary.

Adele W. Combs, Librarian emeritus, age 90, passed away on October 23, 2023. Combs received her Masters in Library Science from Indiana University Bloomington. Followed by a full career in library sciences to include roles at Columbia University, Newport School for Girls and finally as Assistant Librarian for General Services at Northwestern University. Since retiring in 1998, she took pleasure in nature, world travel, reading and volunteering at the Peggy Notebaert Museum. Obituary.

Edmond Confino MD, Professor Emeritus of Obstetrics and Gynecology, passed away May 25, 2023. He was 71 years old. Dr. Confino was recognized as an international authority on fertility and an authority on techniques for non-invasive treatment of fallopian tube occlusion.

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, he later immigrated to southern Israel, where his physician parents served as the only medical doctors in the community. He went on to receive his MD and residency at Tel Aviv University. In the 1990s, he joined the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Northwestern. He was regarded as an exceptional teacher to both students and his colleagues. While at Northwestern, he authored or coauthored more than 70 articles, as well as numerous book chapters in his field.

He is survived by his wife of 32 years, Maryann, and his two sons. Obituary.

Lawrence (Larry)  Joseph Henschen, 78, professor of electrical and computer engineering, passed away suddenly Jan. 8, 2023, at Evanston Hospital. He was an expert in web-based programming for wireless sensor network nodes, visual interfaces for program development, energy harvesting, universal access in human-computer interaction, and automated reasoning with applications to heterogeneous databases. A prolific researcher who won teaching awards, Larry was the chair of computer and information studies at Weinberg from 1980 to 1996 and associate dean of students at the graduate school from 2000 to 2009. Born in Joliet, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, He is survived by his companion of more than 25 years, Julia Chung Lee, who was his frequent co-author. Obituary. 

James A. Ibers, 91, a pioneer in structural coordination and inorganic chemistry, died Dec. 14, 2021, in Chicago. Jim was recognized widely for bringing the science and art of X- ray crystallography to inorganic chemistry, which made the structural determination of metal complexes possible, encouraged the synthesis of new compounds, and led to powerful synthetic methodologies. coordination chemistry, bio-inorganic chemistry, solid state synthesis and X-ray crystallography. He was honored witgh many chemistry awards and retired as the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry. Born in Los Angeles, he took bachelor and doctorate degrees at Caltech, and then was a chemist at Shell Development and  Brookhaven National Laboratory before joining NU in 1965. Obituary. 

David Ingall, 92, a professor of pediatrics, died Feb. 2, 2023. He lived in Highland Park and Naples, Fla. He also was chairman emeritus of pediatrics at Evanston Hospital and earlier was head of neonatology at Boston City Hospital. Dave had a talent for creating teams of pediatricians across sub-specialties, and as a department head he actively mentored colleagues and medical students. He contributed regularly to Remington and Klein’s Infectious Diseases of the Fetus and Newborn Infant, a well-respected neonatal textbook on infectious diseases. Dave was a fan of all Boston sports teams, enjoyed music at Ravinia and the CSO, played tennis.  Obituary.

Cassius T. Ionescu-Tulcea, 97, a mathematics professor specializing on probability theory, statistics and mathematical analysis, died in Chicago March 6, 2021. The Ionescu-Tulcea theorem is important to time-discrete stochastic processes. He also did research on lifting theory, mathematical game theory and mathematical economics. He co-authored a book on casino gambling and several textbooks on mathematics and also wrote a 1981 book on casino dice games and gambling systems and a 1982 book on casino blackjack. Cassius received his education at the University of Bucharest and became a faculty member there. In 1957 he entered the United States to work as a research associate and visiting lecturer at Yale, where he received a doctorate. He moved on to Penn and then to Champaign before joining Northwestern in 1966.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Ionescu-Tulcea.

Bernie Dobroski, 76, music dean from 1990 to 2003, passed away Feb. 19, 2023, at Highland Park Hospital of heart failure while he was recovering from foot surgery. As the school’s sixth dean, he expanded course offerings for nonmajors; established new academic majors in music technology and music cognition; helped create Philharmonia, an orchestra for non-music majors; and initiated a joint degree with Medill. School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. The Evelyn Dunbar Memorial Early Music Festival debuted in 1996, and the Winter Chamber Music Festival in 1997. Bernie received a bachelor’s in music performance from Carnegie Mellon and a master’s from Catholic University before spending four years as a tubist and keyboardist with the U.S. Navy Band. In 1981 he received a PhD from NU and stayed on as an administrator before becoming dean at Oregon. Obituary.   Northwestern Now Remembrance.

Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, a retired Feinberg pediatrics professor who practiced at Lurie Children’s Hospital and Northwestern Medical, passed away June 11, 2023, in Minneapolis. While providing primary care for children ranging from newborns to teenagers, she published articles on childhood obesity, insulin resistance, toddler feeding patterns, gunshot injuries in children, and related topics. “Kathy was intelligent, strong, and magnificently capable as a pediatrician, public health advocate, and mother,” her newspaper obituary read. “Her passing breaks the hearts of many, but she will also be remembered as a true foremother, a pillar in the world of pediatrics and public health.” She was on the advisory board of the consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children. Kathy received her medical degree at Tufts in 1973 and then had residencies in pediatrics at Ohio State and Northwestern. Obituary.

Frank Galati, 79, award-winning stage director and a faculty member in the department of performance studies from 1973 to 2006, died Jan. 2, 2023.  Beloved for his teaching on campus and on stage, he had earned bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Northwestern.  Frank had enormous impact on theater in Chicago and beyond. He was nominated for an Academy Award for adapting “The Accidental Tourist” and won two Tonys for adapting “The Grapes of Wrath,” which originated at Steppenwolf Theatre. He directed “Ragtime” and “The Pirate Queen” on Broadway, as well as dozens of productions in Chicago and elsewhere.  Chris Jones of the Tribune called him “perhaps the most influential Chicago theater artist the city has ever seen. And . . . perhaps the most generous of spirit.”  After retiring, Frank moved to Sarasota, Fla., where he joined Asolo Repertory Theatre. Obituary. 

Robert A. Lamb, 72, a virologist who focused  on influenza and paramyxoviruses, and was the Kenneth F. Burgess professor of molecular and cellular biology and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, died Sept. 5, 2023, at Evanston Hospital. Bob’s research on mechanism of action of viral proteins led to development of new vaccines and medicines. He researched how virus cells work at the molecular level. Each fall there is a Lamb Lecture at NU. Born in London, he moved to the U.S. to join Rockefeller University after his PhD from Cambridge. He joined Northwestern in 1983 and set up the Lamb Laboratory to focus on sequencing viral genes and characterizing viral protein. He chaired the department from 2011 to 2017.  Bob was editor of the Journal of Virology and then editor-in-chief of Virology. In 1997 his team found a way to stop influenza viruses from leaving their host cells and stop the viruses at the end of their replication cycle. Studies on the fusion protein were applicable to the envelope proteins of SARS coronavirus, HIV and Ebola virus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Lamb

Elaine Lazar Grant, 97, who spent 25 years on the faculty in the School of Speech, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, passed away Aug. 18, 2022. She was the first female co-chair of the General Faculty Committee and, was an associate dean of the Graduate School. Elaine was a fellow in the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and a founding member of the Illinois Speech-Language-Hearing Association. She lived Chicago, Evanston, Highland Park and recently Glenview. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern. Adele valued knowledge greatly and, post retirement, organized and took many classes through the Northwestern Alumnae Association. She had two sons and a daughter, eight grandchildren, and 10 great grandchildren, all of whom were the lights of her life. Obituary.

Yuri Manin, 85, an early pioneer of quantum computing and Board of Trustees Professor of Mathematics at Northwestern from 2002 until 2011, died Jan, 7, 2023 at the age of 85. Earlier he was a professor (algebra chair) at the University of Moscow (1965-1992) and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn (1995-2005). His interests included algebraic geometry, diophantine geometry, logic, mathematical physics and quantum computing. He made fundamental contributions to the study of abelian varieties, formal groups, the Mordell conjecture for function fields, algebraic differential equations, arithmetic topology, gauge theory and mirror symmetry. The Gauss-Manin connection is essential in the study of algebraic varieties.  In gauge theory he is well-known for the Atiyah-Drinfeld-Hitchen-Manin construction of instantons. He was born in Crimea and received a doctorate in 1960 at the Steklov Mathematics Institute as a student of Igor Shafarevich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Manin. 

J. (Joseph) Gordon Millichap, 102, professor of pediatrics who was one of the first pediatric neurologists in the U.S., died at home in Chicago May 7, 2021.He was a nationally and internationally recognized expert in treatment of epilepsy, attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, and other neurological disorders of children and adolescents. Born in the United Kingdom, he received his MD there, served in Iraq with the Royal Air Force, had fellowships in pediatrics in Boston, and established pediatric neurology training at Mayo and Northwestern. He wrote more than 150 publications or books on neurology, epilepsy, attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities. He had a private practice in Chicago and saw patients into his 96^th year. The youngest of his four sons, Dr. John, teaches at Lurie Children’s Hospital. Obituary.

Edwin S. Mills III died on October 29, 2021. He was 93 years old. He was Emeritus Professor of Real Estate and Finance at Kellogg’s School of Management. He was a giant in the field of economics and a seminal scholar of economics of urban spatial structure.

In addition to his years at Northwestern, he authored 20 books and more than 150 scholarly papers. He was founder of the Journal of Urban Economics, where he served as Editor for 17 years. He was senior staff member of President Johnson’s U.S. Council of Economic Advisors, a member of President Nixon’s Advisory Committee’s Panel on the Environment, advisor for the World Bank and other key advisory roles. He was a Fulbright Scholar and served as a distinguished professor at Princeton University and Johns Hopkins, among many other notable accomplishments.

The Journal of Urban Economics, in their remembrance of Mills, states: “He was a brilliant scholar who had an enormous impact on generations of researchers and students.” (Helsley, Strange. 2023, Issue #133. In remembrance Edwin S. Mills (1928-2021). Journal of Urban Economics. 11-8-22).

Newton N. Minow, Northwestern Life Trustee and Walter Annenberg Professor Emeritus, passed away on May 6, 2023. He was 97 years old.

Minow served in WWII. He met his wife, Josephine “Jo”, when they were both students at Northwestern. With his law degree, he went on to serve as Chief Justice of the United States, assistant counsel to Governor Adlai Stevenson, and was appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission by President John F. Kennedy. In 2016, he was one of only 21 recipients to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, under President Barack Obama.

He joined NU’s Board of Trustees in 1975 and became a life trustee in 1987. He and his wife contributed greatly to Northwestern, including a named professorship and the Newton and Jo Minow Debate Series at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law.

His life and importance to Northwestern are captured in this remembrance: Northwestern Now remembrance.   

Obituary.

Gordon J. Murphy, 96, McCormick School of Engineering emeritus, passed away on November 26, 2023. After serving during WWII as an electronic technician for the Navy, he started his NU career in 1957 as an associate professor of electrical engineering. Just a handful of years later, he became full professor and chairman of the department, where he was known for his research on Automatic Control and several key textbooks on the topic. He would later expand his research to electronic systems and digital computers. He was awarded emeritus status in 1997.

Throughout his distinguished career, he served as a consultant to companies such as Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company, the AC Electronics division of General Motors Corporation and Motorola, Inc.. Additionally, he was awarded six patents in television, consumer products, motion control, and electronic dental instruments; was president of IPC Systems Inc. and had leadership roles in many engineering organizations.

He was predeceased by his wife of seventy-two years, Dorothy, who was a Northwestern University graduate. Obituary.

John P.  Phair, M.D., Professor emeritus of Infectious Disease died February 19, 2024. He was 89 years old. Dr. Phair was a pioneer in the study, research, and advocacy for HIV/Aids. He served as Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine’s Chief of Infectious Disease from 1970-2000. He brought compassion and a level head to the early days of HIV and fought for patients’ right to be treated with dignity, including children infected with the disease.

Born in Paris, he attended Yale, earned his medical degree at the University of Cincinnati, and then returned to Yale to study infectious disease. He also studied the effects of Hiroshima atomic bomb radiation for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission during the 1960s.

He was the father of famed rocker, Liz Phair. He is survived by his wife, two children and grandchildren.  

Obituary – Chicago Tribune. Obituary Chicago Sun-Times.  

Catharine A. Regan, 91, associate professor emerita of English, died on January 10, 2024, in San Diego, California. During her thirty-three-year career, Catharine taught Old and Middle English and wrote articles on typology and orality in literature and commentary notes for the Oxford edition of John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum. She also developed and taught one of the first web-based classes, History of the English Language, which influenced similar courses at other universities.

After retiring in 1999, Catharine took up a second career as a hospice volunteer. Her expertise, drawn from her study of death and dying in the Dark Ages and her dedication to her patients, made her an excellent and much-appreciated volunteer. Obituary. 

Jerome L. Rosen, 88. a physics professor for more than 40 years, died Feb. 28, 2020. He was primarily interested in experiments in high-energy particle physics. His late work was associated with the HERA-B experiment at the Deutsches El3ktronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany, and with experiment E835 at Fermilab. Both experiments use high-energy proton collisions to examine the properties of quarks. His doctorate was from Columbia. He was a fellow of the American Physics Society and mentored more than 20 PhD students. Obituary.

Roger Schank, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, passed away on January 29, 2023. He was 76 years old. He joined Northwestern in 1989 after professorships at Stanford and Yale. He was a pioneering researcher in the fields of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. While at Northwestern, he influenced many Ph.D. students and founded the interdisciplinary Institute for Learning Sciences. As an educator, he sought to reimagine education, promoting a learn by doing approach.

He was a prolific and recognized author and co-founded the academic journal–Cognitive Science. In addition to his academic pursuits, he founded Socratic Arts, Cognitive Arts, Cognitive Systems. Inc., CompuTeach, Inc., and the nonprofit, Engines for Education. He is survived by his wife, Annie, his children and grandchildren.

McCormick School of Engineering Memorial.

NU School of Education and Social Policy In Memoriam.

Frank Paul Stuart, MD, master transplant surgeon, passed away on May 16, 2023. He was 88 years old. Dr. Stuart graduated from Northwestern’s Medial School, where he met his beloved wife, Joan, who was a nursing student. After completing his surgical residency at the University of California San Francisco, he went on to complete his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School – where he worked alongside Francis D. Moore, MD., a pioneer in organ transplant.

He returned to Northwestern in 1992 to build its world-class transplant program, after doing the same at the University of Chicago for over 20 years.

He was a master surgeon and beloved by not only his wife, children, and grandchildren, but by his colleagues and students. In 2010, he received the Pioneer Award from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.

In his spare time, he and his late wife, Joan, enjoyed sailing, time with family and were supporters of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera and the Goodman Theatre. Obituary.

Donald W. Turner, a dental surgeon and Navy captain, passed away April 23, 2021. He attended St. Louis University on a two-year baseball scholarship, was drafted by the Army and served in Korea as a combat medic. He went back to St. Louis for an undergraduate degree at Washington University. After a doctorate in dental surgery, he took a commission in the Navy dental corps and went to Vietnam to run the dental clinic of the Fifth Marine Regiment, earning a bronze star with combat V. While at the Naval Medical Research Institute, he earned a PhD in microbiology. Later on he commanded a unit at Great Lakes Naval Station. Upon retirement he joined Northwestern as a professor of dentistry and periodontal surgery, where he enjoyed a passion for teaching his trade. Donald was an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan, a skilled builder of wooden ship models, a story teller, a “questionable” pie maker, and an avid Civil War student. Obituary. 

Arthur Veis, Ph.D., 97 years, passed away on April 23, 2023. Dr. Veis was a professor emeritus in Cell & Developmental Biology at Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern’s Dental School. He achieved his Ph.D. from Northwestern as well. His research focused on the mechanisms of biomineralization in bones and teeth, and the role of non-collagenous “SIBLING” proteins in regulation of mineral placement in collagen matricies. Dr. Veis is well-remembered as a dedicated Northwestern Community member. This extended even after retirement, as he helped to shape the newly created Northwestern Emeriti organization, serving as President (2004-’05). He was predeceased by his wife of 61 years, Eve, who was also integral to Northwestern and its Honors Medical Program at Feinberg. He is survived by his children and grandchildren. Services held on April 25, 2023. Obituary.

Otto Karl Werckmeister, 87, an art historian of the New Left and one of the movement’s prodigious intellects and imposing personalities, passed away June 7, 2023. Born in Berlin in 1934, he knew Nazism firsthand, witnessed the arrival of the Red Army, and had direct experience of de-Nazification. Karl received his doctorate in art history, philosophy, and modern literature at Freie Universität Berlin in the 1950s, when the FU was the epicenter of increasingly militant West German students. For Karl, Marxism meant engagement with anything seeming symptomatic of forces in contemporary culture, especially Paul Klee. He had a long-running fascination with comics, graphic novels, animated film and music. Karl taught at UCLA until 1971, then became a professor in art history at Northwestern, retiring in 2002 and relocating to Berlin, “my hometown.”

https://arthistory.uic.edu/news-stories/otto-karl-werckmeister-1934-2023/

Oswald “Ossie” Werner, who had a joint appointment in Anthropology and Linguistics at Northwestern University for 32 years, died on March 26, 2023. He was 95 years old.

At NU, he was a linguistic anthropologist who specialized in Navajo semantics. During this time, he founded The Northwestern Ethnographic Field School, a summer field school based in New Mexico and Arizona. It operated from 1973 until 1994, placing students in Latino and indigenous communities throughout the region. Prior to joining NU, he and his wife, June, opened a successful photography studio. Photography continued to be a passion throughout their lives together.  

He had a profound impact on everyone he encountered, including his many graduate students. He enjoyed a wide range of interests and modeled understanding and appreciation of others. Obituary.

John W. Wick, Professor Emeritus of Statistics, passed away on March 8, 2023. He was 88 years old. After serving in the U.S. Army as a Morse Code Interceptor, he went to college–eventually earning his Ph.D. in statistics and joining Northwestern as a professor of statistics. A leading authority in the field of Tests and Measurement, he authored a number of books and standardized test programs.

He was married to wife, Marti, for 49 years and enjoyed spending time with his family, including grandkids and great-grandkids. Hobbies included fishing, cooking and golf. Obituary.

Andris (Andy) A. Zoltners, Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Marketing passed away on April 11, 2023. He retired from Northwestern’s Kellogg School in 2010 after more than 30 years on the faculty.

After achieving undergraduate and graduate degrees in mathematics and an MSIA and Ph.D. in Industrial Administration, he developed a popular MBA salesforce course and started a series of successful executive programs dealing with sales force issues. In 1983, he cofounded ZS Associates with Prabha Sinah, where they used their integer programming models to solve key sales force questions. Today,  ZS has over 15,000 employees.

He was co-author of nine books and has written over 40 articles on sales force management, analytics, incentive compensation and marketing. His generosity and dedication to academic research led to him establishing professorships at Purdue, Carnegie Mellon and at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. While at Kellogg, he chaired 12 Ph.D. theses, with former students now senior professors at leading universities.

He enjoyed sports and was an avid bicyclist, kayaker and accomplished swimmer. He is survived by his wife, children, and grandchildren. A service honoring Professor Zoltners will be held on April 22, 10:30-11:30 am at Alice Millar Chapel on the Evanston campus.