Francis E. Wylie, MIT's public relations director from 1955 to 1970, died of pneumonia on Jan. 27. He was 97 years old.
Wylie, who often used the byline Jeff Wylie, was Time-Life's first New England bureau chief. He covered presidential campaigns and wrote about major figures of the day, including poet Robert Frost, Massachusetts governor and secretary of state Christian Herter, cartoonist Al Capp, and Harvard University president James Bryant Conant. He was a graduate of Indiana University. After retiring from MIT, Wylie wrote two books, "MIT in Perspective" and "Tides and the Pull of the Moon."
Wylie is survived by two sons, David of Bolton, Mass., and Richard of Washington, D.C.; three grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
