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Shigeya Kihara
Kihara was one of the first four faculty members of the institute, which was founded in 1941 to teach Japanese to American soldiers. Originally known as the 4th Army Intelligence School, and based at the Presidio in San Francisco, the school grew into the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey. Kihara, who received his bachelor’s in political science and a master’s in international relations in 1939, witnessed the roundup and internment of thousands of his fellow Nisei in concentration camps after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. According to press reports, Kihara was exempt from relocation because of his post with the language school. He never forgot the internment of friends and family, however, and after 9/11, he warned Americans to avoid discriminating against persons of Middle Eastern descent. He also assisted with the creation of a Smithsonian Institution exhibit on the Japanese-American experience. Kihara was a loyal Berkeley alumnus throughout his life, and attended football and basketball games. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son Ron, and daughter Terry Kihara-Twomey. Alan Dundes
Dundes collapsed on campus while teaching a graduate seminar on folklore theory and techniques. He was rushed to the hospital, but died en route of an apparent heart attack. “To call Alan Dundes a giant in his field is a great understatement,” said George Breslauer, a professor of political science and dean of the division of social studies in Cal’s College of Letters and Science. “He virtually constructed the field of modern folklore studies and trained many of its most distinguished scholars. Anyone who has ever taken a class with Alan Dundes knows that it was an unforgettable experience.” Delighting in what he called “the wit, humor, and amazing creativity” found in folklore, Dundes said most people think folklore is found only in superstition, ritual, myths, and fables. But he also studied contemporary cartoons, poems, jokes, and other lore passed along from one person to another. In his book Never Try to Teach a Pig to Sing, he and co-author Carl Sing Pagter analyzed modern folklore, including T-shirts, slogans, ethnic and sexual remarks, scatological humor, and exchanges distributed via office photocopy machines. He was the author of more than 250 scholarly articles and a dozen books, among them Cracking Jokes and Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore. Speaking at commencement in 2002, Dundes exemplified his gift for nonstop laughs. Among his tips to the graduates, he said: “It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.” He is survived by his wife Carolyn, three children, and six grandchildren. Gerard Debreu
Debreu won the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1983 for applying mathematical rigor to the fundamental theory of supply and demand in economics. The law of supply and demand dates back to the 18th century, but Debreu’s mathematical models provided proof of how prices affect the supplies of goods bought and sold. Through the work of Debreu and others, the conditions of the “invisible hand” in the marketplace were clarified. A native of Calais, France, Debreu was an officer of the French Legion of Honor and a commander of the French National Order of Merit. Kenneth Arrow, a Stanford University economics professor and fellow Nobel laureate, said they each found themselves independently researching similar economic ideas in the early 1950s, which eventually led to a joint paper in 1954 on the existence of equilibrium in an economy. Arrow warmly remembered how they collaborated on the paper. “It was a wonderful experience, he was just so brilliant to work with.” Debreu was born on July 4, 1921. He broke off his studies in mathematics as a young man to enlist in the French army after D-Day, serving briefly in the French occupational forces in Germany until July 1945. He resumed his studies after the war, shifting his focus to economics. Before his almost 30-year tenure at Berkeley, Debreu worked from 1950 to 1960 at the University of Chicago and Yale University for the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, and at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from 1960 to 1961. Debreu remained an active researcher and teacher after his retirement in 1991. He was also an economic adviser to several governments and toured extensively in Europe to lecture on economic theory. “He really was the most important contributor to the development of formal math models within economics,” said Professor Robert Anderson, who holds a joint appointment in economics and mathematics. “He brought to economics a mathematical rigor that had not been seen before.” He is survived by his former wife Francoise, two daughters, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Back to Top |
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