In Memoriam
2012
We were very sad to learn the death of our colleague Professor Shoshichi Kobayashi on August 29, 2012, at the age of 80. Professor Kobayashi joined our department faculty in 1962. He had done his undergraduate studies at the University of Tokyo, and obtained his PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1956.
Professor Kobayashi was one of the most important contributors to the field of differential geometry in the second half of the twentieth century. His early work concerned the theory of connections; another major interest of his was the relation of curvature to topology, in particular on Kähler manifolds. The majority of his career, though, was devoted to complex geometry. Notions such as the Kobayashi pseudodistance and Kobayashi hyperbolicity have become indispensible tools for the study of mappings of complex manifolds.
Several of Professor Kobayashi's books are now standard references in differential and complex geometry, among them his two-volume treatise with Katsumi Nomizu entitled "Foundations of Differential Geometry" from which generations of students and other scholars have learned the essentials of the subject.
Professor Kobayashi served as Chair of the Department of Mathematics from 1978 to 1981, a time during which he stood up to the administration to preserve the department's space in Evans Hall. His legacy also includes the 35 PhD students whose dissertations he supervised at Berkeley.
We sadly report the death of our colleague Professor William G. Bade, who died on August 10, 2012, at the age of 88. Professor Bade received his PhD in 1951 at UCLA under Angus Taylor. He then spent three years at Yale, where he met Philip C. Curtis, Jr; the two became close friends and longtime mathematical collaborators.
Professor Bade joined the Berkeley faculty in 1955. He and Curtis were prominent contributors to the subject of Banach algebras, which was rapidly expanding at the time. Notably, they pioneered the study of radical Banach algebras, an infinite-dimensional generalization of rings of nilpotent matrices. Professor Bade directed 24 successful doctoral dissertations, and many of his students made significant advances in the field he and Curtis had originated.
Professor Bade served for many years as our Vice Chair for Graduate Affairs. His devotion to our graduate students went far beyond the call of duty. He viewed his role not merely as a mathematical advisor but also as a personal friend.
Professor Bade became Professor Emeritus upon his retirement in 1991. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Elly, by six children, and by five grandchildren.
