Obituaries

Dr. Mark Price PhD '01 an orthopedic surgeon who augmented his military honors with Super Bowl rings in 2017 and 2019 and a World Series ring in 2018 through his sports medicine duties with the Patriots and Red Sox, has died at age 52, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. Awarded a Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan, Price was an integral part of the Red Sox and Patriots organizations, with owner Robert Kraft commenting he “was a blessing to have on our staff for nearly a decade and we’re going to miss him dearly.”

Alum Brian Ketcham, “an engineer and influential environmentalist who promoted mass transit and favored bridge tolls, bus lanes, limits on parking and other curbs on vehicular traffic,” has died at age 85, reports Sam Roberts for The New York Times. As a long-time city official and consultant, “no one in New York City or anywhere accomplished as much as Brian in reducing the societal harms of urban auto use,” says former city environmental analyst Charles Komanoff.

Writing for Nature, Marinko Sarunic and Cynthia Toth memorialize the life and work of Joseph A. Izatt PhD '91, who “had a special gift, and commitment, to reaching out and working with students and clinicians to create transformative technology." After undergraduate studies at MIT, Izatt focused on applied optics for his graduate work, with his mentors Prof. Michael Feld and Prof. James Fujimoto. 

Research affiliate Thomas Neff, a physicist known for his proposal aimed at “reducing the global stockpile of nuclear weapons and helping stabilize the former Soviet Union,” has died at age 80, reports Harrison Smith for the Washington Post. Credited with the “Megatons to Megawatts” agreement, “Dr. Neff spent years working in arms control, nuclear weapons proliferation and uranium markets, bridging the divide between experts who specialized in the kind of highly enriched uranium used for warheads and the far less enriched version used for electricity generation,” Smith writes.

Research affiliate Thomas Neff, a physicist whose work with nuclear weapon conversion led to an agreement “that reduced nuclear threats and produced one of the greatest peace dividends of all time,” has died at the age of 80, reports William J. Broad for The New York Times. Neff’s idea of converting Soviet nuclear weapons into electricity used to power American cities “turned some 20,000 Russian nuclear arms into electricity, lighting billions of American lightbulbs.” 

Prof. Emerita Mary-Lou Pardue, a cellular and molecular biologist whose work “formed the foundation for key advancements and discoveries in understanding the structure of chromosomes,” has died at age 90, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. Pardue “was a role model of what women in science can be at a time when there weren’t a lot of those, and a trailblazer as a woman,” emphasizes Ky Lowenhaupt, manager of the Biophysical Instrumentation Facility at MIT, “but also a trailblazer as a scientist who didn’t do things along the path that other people took.”

Harrison White '50, PhD '55, “a theoretical physicist-turned-sociologist who upended the study of human relations and society” has died at age 94, reports Michael Rosenwald for The New York Times. “With his background in physics, Professor White viewed humans as nodes within social networks,” writes Rosenwald. “Those networks operated in complex ways that shaped economic mobility, financial markets, language and other social phenomena.”

C. Gordon Bell ’57, SM 57 was a “computer pioneer always looking ten steps ahead and building that version of the world,” writes Gizmodo’s Matt Novak. Bell was, “a true visionary in the world of computing who helped design some of the first minicomputers in the 1960s," Novak adds. 

Called the “Frank Lloyd Wright of computers,” technology visionary C. Gordon Bell ’57, SM '57, “the master architect in the effort to create smaller, affordable, interactive computers that could be clustered into a network,” has died. “He was among a handful of influential engineers whose designs formed the vital bridge between the room-size models of the mainframe era and the advent of the personal computer,” notes Glenn Rifkin for The New York Times. 

Alex Viega of the Associated Press reports on the death of former MIT Prof. James Simons '58, a life member emeritus of the MIT Corporation and “a renowned mathematician and pioneering investor who built a fortune on Wall Street and then became one of the nation’s biggest philanthropists.” Simons and his wife Marilyn co-founded the Simons Foundation, whose president said, “Jim was an exceptional leader who did transformative work in mathematics and developed a world-leading investment company.” 

Gabriel Klein MBA '18 – senior director at EY-Parthenon, and a “beloved husband, son, brother, friend and colleague” – has died at the age of 35, reports Jeremy C. Fox for The Boston Globe. “He taught me what it meant to be a good person, to be a mensch,” says Gabriel’s brother, Noah Klein. “He taught me that you have to always be a loyal friend, and you always have to be a good son, and that means putting other people in front of yourself.”

Prof. Edward Roberts, one of the area’s “most influential pioneers in entrepreneurship” known for his work “encouraging startups and increasing MIT’s role in the tech industry ecosystem,” has died at 88, reports Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe. “There’s this narrative that you’re born to be an entrepreneur, and he did this research and debunked that,” explains Prof. Bill Aulet. “It’s impossible to go into entrepreneurship, especially in Boston, but even globally, without finding his influences.”

Lynn Yamada Davis '77, a TikTok creator known as “the internet’s grandma” for sharing her “quirky, educational cooking content,” has died at age 77, reports Morgan Sung for TechCrunch. “Before she was a content creator, Davis was an accomplished engineer — a feat for women of color at the time,” writes Sung.

Lynn Yamada Davis '77, “a TikTok creator who brought joy to millions of people with her zany style and cooking tips on her account, Cooking With Lynja,” has died at 67, writes Claire Moses for The New York Times. Before becoming a TikTok star, Davis “had this whole chapter as a groundbreaking female engineer, and she was very proud of that,” her daughter Hannah Shofet explained. Her son, Sean Davis noted that the final chapter of her life spent travelling the world, meeting people and cooking and eating amazing food was “exactly how she would have wanted it to be written.”

The Economist spotlights the life of Prof. Emeritus Robert M. Solow, a Nobel laureate whose work in growth theory “added both to national spending and the economy’s productive capacity.” The Economist notes that: “the MIT culture he embodied disdained hierarchy, cherished collegial lunches and made time for students, many of whom became illustrious friends.”