Farewell
Richard Barlow died in 2024. He was a professor emeritus of industrial engineering and operations research and widely recognized as a pioneering figure in modern reliability theory. Prior to joining UC Berkeley’s faculty in 1963, Barlow worked at the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Rand Corporation. He and Frank Proschan co-authored two seminal works on reliability engineering and were later awarded the John von Neumann Theory Prize for their contributions to operations research and the management sciences. Throughout his tenure, Barlow was deeply committed to mentoring graduate students and supervised numerous Ph.D. dissertations. Among his honors, he was named a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences for his lasting impact on theory and practice.
Michael Harrison died in June at the age of 89. He was a professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer sciences. In 1963, after earning his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Harrison joined the faculty at UC Berkeley, where he stayed for over three decades. He was widely known for his contributions to automata theory, formal languages and sequential machines, and his 1965 textbook, “Introduction to Switching and Automata Theory,” became a standard in the field. During his career, Harrison authored more than 200 technical publications and co-founded Gain Technology with former Ph.D. student Pehong Chen, building off their research on multimedia document authoring systems. In addition, he held numerous leadership roles in the computing community, including as vice president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE and AAAS.
George Leitmann (Ph.D.’56 EngSci) died in May at the age of 99. He was a professor emeritus of engineering sciences. Leitmann made seminal contributions to the theory of optimal control, dynamic games and operations research. His work has been used to optimize the design of aircraft and the ballistics of rockets, to understand the human immune response and to minimize costs while maximizing productivity in business decisions. As a teenager, Leitmann fled Nazi-occupied Europe to settle in the United States. He later became a decorated U.S. Army veteran, receiving France’s highest honor for his valor during World War II. In his 60 years at UC Berkeley, Leitmann was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and authored or co-authored more than 300 scholarly articles and 15 books, including an authoritative textbook on optimal control. He also was the recipient of the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award and the Berkeley Citation Award.
Digby Macdonald died in June at the age of 82. He was a professor in residence of materials science and engineering and of nuclear engineering. His contributions to corrosion science and electrochemical systems laid the foundation for improvements in energy storage, battery design, nuclear reactor safety and advanced materials. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, he held faculty appointments at Pennsylvania State University and The Ohio State University. Outside academia, Macdonald held technical management and leadership roles at research and development organizations, including SRI International. He also authored or co-authored hundreds of publications and was a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Royal Society of Canada and The Electrochemical Society. Among his many honors, Macdonald was a recipient of the Frumkin Memorial Medal of the International Society of Electrochemistry.
Ronald Wolff died in October 2024 at the age of 90. He was a distinguished professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, where he was a foundational figure for many decades. Wolff was one of the world’s most preeminent experts in queueing theory and stochastic processes, pioneering the notion of workload and work conservation for the analysis of queues and publishing a seminal queueing result called PASTA (Poisson Arrivals See Time Averages), which is among the most frequently cited articles in queueing literature. He was committed to nurturing the next generation of engineers and scholars at UC Berkeley through his mentorship and philanthropy, establishing the Ronald W. Wolff Chancellor’s Chair in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and the Ronald W. Wolff Fellowship.
OTHER COMMUNITY MEMBERS
Brandon Allen, EECS undergraduate student
Albert Chou (B.S.’54 ME)
Leonard Heier (M.S.’58 EECS)
James Holcombe (B.S.’67, M.S.’74 CE)
Richard Karn (B.S.’50 CE)
Charles Landram (B.S.’62, M.S.’63, Ph.D.’67 ME)
Angela Lin (B.S.’17 EECS)
Philip Lucht (M.S.’71 EECS)
John Maneatis (B.S.’88 EECS)
John Molis (M.S.’71 IEOR)
John Pennucci (M.S.’80 ME)
Harry Ramsey (B.S.’60 EECS)
Edward Rinne (B.S.’61, M.S.’63 CE)
David Rogers (M.S.’79, Ph.D.’82 CE)
Robert Spear (B.S.’62, M.S.’63 ME)
Richard Waugh (B.S.’58 ME)
John Williams (B.S.’57, M.S.’59 ME)