MIT Class of 1963, Class Notes for the January/February
2007 issue of Technology Review
Our class hero this month is *Frank Levy. I was rummaging in my garage under the pretense of throwing away some old junk when I came across copies of Tangent, the MIT literary magazine. Frank was a frequent contributor to Tangent, and in 1963 won the Boit Prize for creative writing for his piece, "A Tableau for Rosenzweig." I'll tell you more about Rosenzwieg in future columns. I decided to E-mail Frank, but he beat me to the punch, sending me a message on another subject. As "payment" for my response I asked him to update me on his post MIT experiences. Frank went to Yale for economics graduate school but moved back to Cambridge to write his dissertation on the Boston Schools. In 1967, he went to Berkeley where he taught economics and public policy for 10 years. In 1975 he married Kathy Swartz '71, Course 14. In 1977 he and Kathy moved to DC where they lived for 15 years. For four of those years, Frank worked at the Urban Institute, a research/consulting firm, and Kathy taught at the University of Maryland. When the University of Maryland started its public policy school in 1981, Frank joined the faculty and about that time, Kathy moved to the Urban Institute, preserving parity. During this time their two children were born. Dave, the older, worked for five years in NYC government and is now starting an MBA at Sloan. Marin is starting her third year at Yale Law School. In 1992 Frank moved to the MIT faculty where he teaches economics to aspiring city planners in Course 11; Kathy moved to the Harvard School of Public Health. For much of the past ten years, he has worked on how computerized work changes the job mix and the kinds of thinking the remaining jobs require. For more see Frank's web site (web.mit.edu/flevy/www.) Frank had a story for us about *Bob Ratner, one of the larger than life characters in our class. When we were undergraduates, call-in talk shows were just beginning and the stations were sensitive to obscenity on the air. They devised the 15 second tape delay, but Bob made it his business to outwit them. He would call in and engage the announcer in an erudite discussion of French foreign policy or something. The announcer would then say "Thank you for calling, Mr. Ratner" and Bob would say, "And f- you very much." Often enough the announcer couldn't believe what he heard and the "f- you" would get through. Frank remembers sitting in his room with several others listening to this performance. And "f- you very much" has proven to be of constant use in Frank's daily conversation.
*Fred Shirley is a photographer and "Hiking Editor" for Heart of New Hampshire, a glossy quarterly magazine. The summer issue has an article Fred wrote on hiking New Hampshire mountains "to be on top at sunset." He advises bringing a headlamp or flashlight to find the trail when hiking back down in the dark, but suggests, "It can be a fun game to see how far down you can hike before having to turn on any artificial light." Hmmmmm ...
Last issue I reported the May 2005 death from cancer of our classmate *Ted Cohn, but I had no details. Class webmaster *Ron Young found an obituary of Ted on a UC Berkeley website, which I summarize here. Ted was a professor of optometry and bioengineering, and a leading researcher in signal detection theory and its real-world applications. After graduating in Course 6 from MIT he received three degrees from the University of Michigan, an M.S. in bioengineering (1965), an M.A. in mathematics (1966), and a Ph.D. in bioengineering (1969). He came to Berkeley in 1970 as an assistant professor of physiological optics and spent his entire professional career there. From studying how people pick signals out of cluttered backgrounds, to elucidating neural responses to visual input, to applying that knowledge to design improved traffic safety devices, his work was united by the common theme of vision. When Berkeley established a bioengineering department in 1998, Ted played a major role in its development and was given a joint appointment in bioengineering and optometry. His interest in signal detection theory began at MIT and Michigan, both hotbeds of research in the field, providing models based on precise language and graphic notation for analyzing how people make decisions in the face of uncertain events. While much of Ted's work addressed the limits of human visual performance, he also studied the signals passing from the eye to the brain in frogs, cats and locusts, noting that the eye's response to repetitions of a visual stimulus such as a flash of light varies from one occurrence to the next. If the same flash is presented repeatedly, the eye's electrical signal to the brain is slightly different each time. Whether you see something or not, and how reliably you see it, doesn't just depend on the magnitude of the electrical response, but on how reproducible that response is. For most of the past 15 years Ted applied his knowledge of vision science to solve practical problems in the field of transportation engineering. He used his understanding of the way the eye detects visual signals and passes that information to the brain to develop warning systems that provide faster human reaction times. In the late 1990s the California Department of Transportation asked Ted to test the effectiveness of light-emitting diodes in traffic lights. When he and his laboratory team showed that low-energy LEDs were at least as effective visually as standard incandescent units, Caltrans began switching to LED-based traffic signals across the state, resulting in huge energy savings. Ted was equally admired for his service to UC Berkeley and his dedication to students and colleagues. He took on projects that required long hours, tact and patience, such as the initiation of an undergraduate program, Health Arts and Sciences, that gave a broad background for students interested in the field of health, and the development of a joint program in medical education between UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley. He was strongly committed to mentoring students from disadvantaged backgrounds or any student seeking to discover his or her academic passion. Years before similar programs were formalized by many colleges, he made his lab available to disadvantaged high school students considering attending UC Berkeley and to undergrads who needed experience. Memorial contributions for a fund for mentoring undergraduate students can be made to the "Ted Cohn Mentorship Fund for Undergraduate Research," in care of Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St., Berkeley, CA 94709.
Sadly I have another passing to report. *Robert M Schwarcz, a course 8 graduate, died in 2006. His hometown was Coral Gables, FL. At MIT he lived in Senior House where he was athletic chairman and an avid participant in intramurals. He also participated in varsity swimming and crew. Our condolences to Robert's family. Any stories or information you can share about our classmate would be appreciated.
Regards to all. You can reach me at: Mike Bertin, 22 Gillman St, Irvine, CA 92612. E-mail: MCB1@aol.com. If you want to schmooze, call me at (949) 786-9450