| Deaths |
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May 5, 2009, Volume 55, No. 32 |
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Dr. Borns, Radiology
Dr. Patricia F. Borns, professor emerita of radiology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, passed away April 15. She was 87 years old.
Before coming to Penn, Dr. Borns was at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. She was promoted to associate professor of clinical radiology in the School of Medicine in 1971. She left Penn to head the radiology departments at Hahnemann University Hospital and the Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. Dr. Borns returned to Penn in the mid-1980s, at which time she was appointed professor of radiology at CHOP.
Considered a pioneer in pediatric radiology, Dr. Borns found that some problems that arise during cancer treatment in children can be eliminated if doctors are aware of what side effects to expect for specific drugs. In addition, recognizing the side effects that appear as tumors in the x-ray is important in preventing over treatment of a nonexistent recurrent malignancy or persisting treatment with a toxic agent.
Dr. Borns received her BSc from Purdue University and her MD from Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia where she was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha. She completed her internship at Philadelphia General Hospital and her residency and fellowship in radiology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Borns is survived by a son, David J.; a daughter, Jane; and a grandson, David; and cousins, Nina Krakenberg and Zane Murfitt.
A memorial service is planned for the fall in Philadelphia. Contributions may be made to the Princeton University Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, NJ 08542.
Dr. Hurvich, Psychology
Dr. Leo M. Hurvich, professor emeritus of psychology, died at home in New York City April 25, at age 98.
Working closely and effectively as a team and co-publishing since 1945 (and marrying in 1948), Dr. Hurvich and his wife Dorothea Jameson, who predeceased him in 1998, received joint recognition for their major contributions to our understanding of how we perceive color and of how our visual systems operate. Thus, they were elected to the major honorific societies including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, received many awards, and published numerous joint as well as individual articles and books.
Dr. Hurvich earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University. After receiving his PhD from Harvard’s psychology department in 1936, he worked there until 1947, then at the Color Technology Division of Eastman Kodak. In 1957, he returned to academia, first in the psychology department of New York University (until 1962) and then at the University of Pennsylvania (until retiring as professor emeritus in 1979). He also spent a year as a visiting research professor at Columbia University (1971) and a year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1981).
When Dr. Hurvich and Professor Jameson began investigating the nature of color vision at Eastman Kodak, the dominant theoretical idea was the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory, which states the wavelength composition of light is encoded by three separate classes of cone photoreceptors. The essential features of this trichromatic theory were well-worked out by the mid-19th century, and it successfully explained how mixtures of primary colors can mimic the appearance of arbitrary lights and provided the basis for color reproduction technologies.
Dr. Hurvich and Professor Jameson found, however, that trichromatic theory did not provide a good account of the way that colors appear, and they revived and modernized what had until then been seen as an alternative proposal, namely that color processing relies on three opponent visual channels each of which signals mutually exclusive perceptual response states (red versus green, blue versus yellow, and white versus black for the three channels respectively). They devised an ingenious hue cancellation procedure which allowed experimental quantification of the properties of the opponent channels and in a series of papers that are remarkable for their rigor and scope, they developed an opponent-process model that provides a unified account of normal human color vision and of deficits in color vision that had previously gone unexplained. An important feature of their work was that it explicitly coupled the opponent-color channels to the cone photoreceptors of trichromatic theory, thus clarifying the complementary nature of what had previously been viewed as competing ideas. Their behavioral work was synergistically supported by the discovery of color-opponent cells in fish (by G. Svaetichin) and subsequently in monkeys (by R. DeValois). The theoretical framework they developed was highly influential in guiding a generation of subsequent research aimed at elaborating and refining the characterization of opponent-color processes inferred from behavioral measurements, and at identifying the neural substrates for these processes.
“Although he retired in 1979, Dr. Hurvich remained active in writing and conference participation until about the turn of this century. His 1981 book, Color Vision, provides a comprehensive treatment of the field that is still in wide use, and the impact of his and Professor Jameson’s contributions will remain with us for much longer,” said his friend, Dr. Julian Hochberg.
Dr. Hurvich is survived by many friends and the children for whom he and his wife had been appointed guardians.
Memorial donations may be made to the Center for Constitutional Rights, 666 Broadway 7th floor, New York, NY 10012.
Dr. Schad, Vet Medicine
Dr. Gerhard A. Schad, professor of parasitology in the department of pathobiology in the School of Veterinary Medicine, passed away April 25 at age 81.
Dr. Schad was appointed to the School of Veterinary Medicine faculty in 1973 and later was promoted to professor in 1977. He was praised by graduate students for his veterinary parasitology course as being one of the best doctoral courses at Penn. Dr. Schad had also been a professor in the Graduate Group in Parasitology and of the Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group (CAMB) in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Highly published, he had done groundbreaking research on the biology of human hookworms. His research interests included developmental biology and neurobiology of parasitic nematodes, ecology and epidemiology of parasitic helminthes of man and animal, and experimental ancylostomiasis and strongyloidiasis: laboratory models for intestinal nematode parasitism. Most recently, his research involved understanding how certain parasitic worms are able to find the people and animals they are going to infect.
Previously, Dr. Schad worked for the US Department of Agriculture in State College, New Mexico, where he studied the transmission of parasites from wild to domestic ruminants. He then changed his primary area of study from wildlife parasitology to ecological and evolutionary parasitology and went to John Hopkins University in the mid-1960s, where he ran a parasitology program in Calcutta, India until coming to Penn.
Amongst his many honors, Dr. Schad received the Clark P. Read Mentor Award from the American Society of Parasitologists of which he was president in 1990.
He had also been a member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Schad earned a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Cornell University in 1950 and earned a master’s degree and doctorate in parasitology from McGill University in Montreal, in 1952 and 1955, respectively.
Dr. Schad is survived his wife, Margaret Mulqueen; son, Eric; daughter, Lisa; five stepchildren; and nine grandchildren.
Memorial donations may be made to the Nature Conservancy, 4245 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1606.
To Report A Death
Almanac appreciates being informed of the deaths of current and former faculty and staff members, students, and other members of the University community.
However, notices of alumni deaths should be directed to the Alumni Records Office at Room 545, Franklin Building, (215) 898-8136 or e-mail record@ben.dev.upenn.edu. |
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