Last updated on 07/08/2025
I only know of two UO professors who’ve made the cut: Economics Professor Ray Mikesell, who died in 2006 at 93, and now Biology Professor Frank Stahl, who died this April at 95. Please post a link if you know of others. Ray’s brief obituary – which I’m happy to claim some credit for persuading them to publish – is here.
UO’s normally effusive PR flacks have not seen fit to note Frank Stahl’s passing, but the NYT more than makes up for that with an obituary that goes into an impressively detailed explanation of the work that made him deserving:
I suspect Michael Posner, Paul Slovic, Geri Richmond and David Wineland will eventually have NYT obits……..the standard dfn of Research Excellence.
UO is not very good at fostering this level of accomplishment.
Agreed on all counts. Both Mikesell and Stahl did their important work before UO. Fwiw, while the NYTimes does say that Mikesell was an aid to Harry Dexter White and was at Bretton Woods, they did not mention that White was almost certainly a Soviet spy. Wiki here.
The story Ray told me on a ski trip up to Willamette Pass was that Nixon suspected him too, by association if nothing else, and he was strongly advised in 1953 to leave his consulting job at Treasury and his faculty job at UVA “… for someplace far away from DC and politics. Like, I don’t know, Oregon.” Not a big sacrifice for Ray, who loved the outdoors and would pester me to go for a ski or hike most every weekend well into his 90’s.
The UO is an old hand at not acknowledging the expertise and accomplishments of many of its highest-profile faculty. I might mention Mark Johnson, Steve Shankman, and George Wickes. All the recognition of all our “excellence” goes to athletics and donors.