Deaths

Joseph Armstrong

Joseph Armstrong, a building service worker, died March 20
at Urbana. He was 51.

Survivors include his wife, Sharon; a son; and a sister.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Seymour United
Methodist Church.


George Dittmann

George Dittmann, a retired instrument maker, died March 24
at Covenant Medical Center, Urbana. He was 72.

Dittmann retired in 1987, after 30 years on the UI staff. He
attended the UI and was an apprentice machinist at the Elgin
Watch Co.

Survivors include his wife, Marilyn; two sons; two
daughters; two sisters; and four grandchildren.


Hazel McInnes

Hazel McInnes, a retired food service worker, died March 28
at the Urbana Americana Healthcare Center. She was 77.

McInnes was employed at the Illini Union for 20 years. She
retired in 1988.

Survivors include a brother, a sister, two nieces and a
nephew.

Memorial contributions may be made to the American Heart
Association.


Earl Planty

Earl Planty, a professor emeritus of management, died Dec.
19 at Boca Raton, Fla. He was 91.

Planty was a faculty member in the College of Commerce and
Business Administration from 1955 until he retired in 1967.
He took a two-year leave of absence from the UI to serve as
the dean of the College of Business Administration at Haile
Selassie I University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 1964 to
1966.

He was elected a fellow of the Academy of Management in
1960.

Survivors include his wife, Marjorie; two daughters; four
grandchildren; and two sisters.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Research Division,
National Alzheimer's Association, 919 N. Michigan Ave.,
Chicago, IL 60611.


Lee A. Rubel

Lee A. Rubel, a UI mathematician who advocated greater use
of analog computers and was renowned in many branches of his
field, died March 25 in Covenant Hospital, Urbana. He was
66.

A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. April 16 at Smith
Memorial Hall.

C. Ward Henson, a former chair of the mathematics
department, said Rubel was "one of the most original and
inspiring mathematicians of his generation. He kept his
considerable creative powers to the very end of his life."

Anil Nerode, a mathematician at Cornell University and vice
president of the American Mathematical Society, said, "I
regard [Rubel's work] as the most significant in
differential algebra since ... the 1930s, and it deserves to
be much more widely known."

In his last years, Rubel developed mathematics to improve
analog computers, which use equations rather than raw data,
as do digital computers, to determine patterns.

Analog computers can be used in conjunction with biological
computing, neural networks, and particle accelerators,
according to computer scientist Jonathan W. Mills at Indiana
University in Bloomington.

"Rubel's theoretical blueprint has been as important a
contribution to analog computing as Alan Turing's machine
was to digital computing," Mills said. Turing devised a
theoretical computer that is a mathematical model of digital
computers. "Rubel's work will be the foundation of analog
computer research for the next decade and beyond."

Rubel was editor of a variety of mathematical journals and
served on committees of the American Mathematical Society.
He became disenchanted with the AMS because, he wrote in the
February issue of its journal, Notices, he felt the AMS had
turned away from research and compromised "the pure pursuit
of mathematics, whose aim is to discover, prove and
understand theorems."

A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and of the
City College of New York, Rubel earned a doctorate in
mathematics at the University of Wisconsin in 1954. He was a
visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, N.J., from 1956 to 1958, and joined the UI
faculty in 1958. He retired in 1993 to devote himself to
research.

Rubel is survived by his wife, Nina; a son; a daughter; and
a brother.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Arthur Danielyan
Fund, P.O. Box 416, Champaign, IL 61824-0416, to provide
partial support for a young Armenian mathematician.


Richard Stegeman

Richard Stegeman, retired professor of journalism, died
March 27 at St. Peter's Manor, St. Louis. He was 59.

Stegeman was on the UI faculty from 1984 to 1992. He was the
editor of the Metro-East-Journal at East St. Louis in the
1970s and early '80s when the paper closed. He taught
journalism at Cairo, Egypt, from 1965 to 1968.

Survivors include his wife, Beatrice; a daughter; and a
sister.