Farewell
David Dornfeld, faculty director of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, the former chair of mechanical engineering and a worldwide expert in smart and sustainable manufacturing, died in March. He was 66. Dornfeld held the Will C. Hall Family Professorship and led Berkeley’s Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and received many other honors and awards during his tenure at Berkeley, which began in 1977. As a department chair, Dornfeld expanded industrial relationships and led Berkeley’s participation in the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, a national initiative to encourage investment in emerging technologies for the enhancement of U.S. manufacturing competitiveness. He mentored countless students and was an advocate for experiential and entrepreneurial engineering education.
Read more: David A. Dornfeld, professor, manufacturing expert, college leader, 1949-2016
(Noah Berger photo)
Hollis Bascom (B.S.’45 ME) died in October at age 91. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. In 1962, he founded the ORCON Corporation, producing lightweight, non-woven reinforced material fabrics for the aerospace industry. He retired in 2014, after more than 50 years at the company. He held patents in insulation film and carpet-seaming products, used on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the International Space Station. He also served as the first president of Valley Care Hospital in Livermore, California.
Abraham Bers (B.S.’53 EECS) died in September at age 85. He served as principal investigator in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he taught plasma physics and authored the textbook Plasma Physics and Fusion Plasma Electrodynamics. He held numerous patents and was an IEEE fellow, member of the American Physical Society and affiliate of Fusion Power Associates.
Robert F. Carlson (B.S.’43 ME) died in November at age 93. He served as a skipper in the Navy in World War II and returned to earn an M.B.A from Harvard. He was the administrative director of the Harvard Observatory in Colorado for five years before co-founding and serving as CEO of Channel Technologies. He was also an active member of the Santa Barbara Club and Rotary Club.
Robert Fenn (B.S.’63 EECS) died in January at age 82. He worked at the Hawaiian Electric Company and General Electric, and was an active member of the Cal Alumni Association.
Ruth Louise Hinkins (M.S.’94 CS) died last April at age 79. A Wisconsin native, she received her B.S. and M.S. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She taught at Eau Claire State College before moving to California, where she worked for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She earned her M.S. in computer science from Berkeley at age 58, and was passionate about solving challenging mathematical problems through programming.
Andrew Grove (Ph.D.’63 Chemical Engineering), co-founder and longtime leader of Intel Corporation, died in March at age 79. He was best known for his technical contributions to early semiconductor design, as well as for his fast-moving and assertive management style. He is considered one of the creators of the technology business ethos that defines Silicon Valley. As a college student, Grove fled communist rule in his native Hungary, taking refuge in New York City. He studied engineering while learning English, eventually attending Berkeley to earn his doctorate. Toward the end of his career at Intel — he retired in 2005 — Grove faced a public battle with cancer and then Parkinson’s disease. A longtime supporter of Berkeley Engineering, he helped launch the Master of Translational Medicine degree in 2010, a joint program with UCSF designed to apply engineering and entrepreneurship to improve the speed and efficiency of healthcare delivery.
(Bart Nagel photo)
Hormozdyar “Tom” Keyani (B.S.’69 EECS) died in September at age 71. As the head photographer for the Blue and Gold yearbook in 1969, he documented many dramatic moments of Berkeley protests. His two daughters also attended Berkeley: Jennifer Keyani (Ph.D.’07 Chemistry) and Maria Keyani (B.S.’04, M.S.’06 CEE).
Frank D. Masch Jr. (Ph.D.’62 CE) died last April at age 82. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Texas at Austin, and later joined UT’s civil engineering faculty and directed the Hydraulic Research Laboratory. Earlier, he was president of Water Resource Engineers and vice president at Systems Associates; he pioneered models for the simulation of hydrodynamics and water quality systems. He received the Eminent Texas Hydrologist Award and John Hawley Award and was named Science Faculty Fellow by the National Science Foundation.
Clyde N. Moore Jr. (B.S.’40 CE) died in May at age 97. According to his family, he always spoke fondly of his years at Cal, including collecting water quality samples on San Francisco Bay and his job serving food at a girls’ rooming house. He worked nearly 40 years for the Long Beach Water Department, serving as general manager and chief engineer, among other positions.
Gerald Wieczorek (B.S.’71, M.S.’72, M.Eng.’74, Ph.D.’78 CE) died last February at age 65. He worked as a geotechnical engineer for the U.S. Geological Survey offices in Menlo Park, California and in Reston, Virginia for a total of 34 years.
