Paul Fussell, a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania who wrote searingly of the consequences of war and dissected the flaws in American culture, died in Oregon on May 23. He was 88. A World War II veteran, he was best known for his book on the previous world war, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford University Press, 1975). He also taught English at Connecticut College for Women and Rutgers University. See a tribute to him.
Thomas H. O'Connor, a professor emeritus of history at Boston College known for his books on Boston history, died on May 20 after suffering a heart attack. He was 89. Besides writing many books on Boston, including Civil War Boston, Boston Catholics, and The Boston Irish, he was the college's historian. He joined Boston College's faculty in 1950 and retired from full-time teaching in 1993.
William Lee Miller, a scholar in ethics and institutions at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, died in New York City on May 26 following a long illness. He was 86. He published many books on how political leaders dealt with moral problems, among them Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) and Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress (Knopf, 1996).
Paul T. Dee, athletic director at the University of Miami from 1993 to 2008, died on May 12, five days after undergoing surgery for a recurrence of tongue cancer. He was 65. Among his achievements as athletic director were building a campus basketball arena, raising the academic performance of student athletes, and shifting Miami from the Big East to the Atlantic Coast Conference. He also served as chair of the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions. For the 12 years before he became athletic director, he was the university's chief legal counsel. He was still working as a professor of education and human development, and as an adjunct professor of law, at the university and had planned to retire this month.
Hu Shiu-ying, a botanist who identified almost 300 kinds of holly, died of kidney failure on May 22, at age 102. An honorary professor of Chinese medicine and former senior lecturer of biology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she was one of the first Chinese woman to get a doctorate from Harvard University, in 1949. For nearly 30 years, she worked as a research botanist at Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, where she led an effort to catalog the flora of China. The resulting Hu Card Index is a file of more than 150,000 cards identifying Chinese plant names. In 1968 she joined Chinese University. Though she retired in 1975, she continued her research and writing, and was known as "Holly Hu." The university has raised funds to establish a museum at its Sha Tin campus to house 30,000 botanical samples collected by Ms. Hu.
Mark E. Molliver, a professor emeritus of neuroscience and neurology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, died on May 10 of complications following a heart attack. He was 75. His colleagues at the university, where he worked from 1965 until his retirement, in 2006, credited Dr. Molliver with making major discoveries on the role of serotonin, a molecule in the brain believed to be associated with happiness and depression. His research identified negative effects that the obesity drug fen-phen and the drug known as ecstasy have on the brain.
