Richard (Dick) Frederick Schwartz, a former professor in Penn’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, passed away on December 4, 2021 after complications from a fall. He was 99.

Dr. Schwartz served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II (an experience that made him an anti-war activist later in life). After completing his education, Dr. Schwartz began his career by working at RCA Victor. In the late 1950s, he came to Penn’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, which has since been absorbed into Penn Engineering, as an assistant professor. In 1959, he co-authored The Eavesdroppers, a non-fiction book that explored the history of privacy in America and suggested that the dystopian world of George Orwell’s 1984 could be put into practice via government surveillance.

In the fall of 1960, Dr. Schwartz spent a semester at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor as a visiting assistant professor of electrical engineering. In 1963, he served on a Penn panel that created the curriculum for Penn’s first undergraduate computer course. Outside of Penn, Dr. Schwartz was involved with Philadelphia engineering circles. In 1962, he was a judge at the annual Delaware Science Fair, and four years later, he was the keynote speaker of a conference of the Engineering and Technical Societies Council of Delaware Valley. Around 1966, he was promoted to associate professor at Penn.

In 1971, Dr. Schwartz wrote an op-ed in Almanac contesting a proposed unification of all Penn’s undergraduate students into one program (Almanac May 20, 1971). “Freshmen in the college frequently complain that they feel ‘lost’ with no sense of identity,” the piece stated. “Making all students part of a still larger student body will not alleviate this, only make it worse. On the contrary, presently the new engineering students quickly feel a sense of identity. They feel they ‘belong.’ Because of this, the trend should not be toward greater concentration, but rather toward greater decentralization.” Dr. Schwartz was active elsewhere in the Penn community, serving on several Faculty Senate and University Council committees in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Dr. Schwartz left Penn in 1973 to serve as chair of the department of electrical engineering at Michigan Technology University. Twelve years after that, he accepted a position as a professor of electrical engineering at Binghamton University’s Watson School. A gifted tinkerer, Dr. Schwartz would attempt to fix just about any piece of electronic equipment and could build a functioning radio with a lump of galena and some spare parts lying around his shop. After retiring from Binghamton in 2006, Dr. Schwartz moved to Peru, New York, but remained active in teaching, mentoring young students in the Binghamton area. In his spare time, Dr. Schwartz was a clarinetist and pianist.

He is survived by his children, Kate (Schwartz) Mortimer, Stuart Holland (Doug Federhart), Frieda (Schwartz) Cialek (Brett Nyman) and Eric Schwartz (Margaret Yaukey); his step-children, Rachel Romanowicz (Ed) and Richard Boes (Lori); three grandchildren, and four step-grandchildren. A funeral ceremony and memorial service have yet to be scheduled. Gifts in Dr. Schwartz’s memory can be made to the Eleanor L. Schwartz Memorial Fund at the Cortland YMCA, 22 Tompkins St, Cortland, NY 13045.