Forwarded with permission From: R. Kadison <kadison@mail1.sas.upenn.edu> To: NAS Mathematics: [National Academy of Sciences] Subject: sad news Dear Colleagues, With great sadness, I write to note the passing of our colleague, Saunders Mac Lane, the morning of April 14, 2005. He went from a nursing home, a few weeks ago, to a hospital for something more than a week, then to a hospice for a few days where he passed away peacefully. He was 95. Saunders was the colleague of all of us, and a good friend to many of us. His wisdom and advice will be sorely missed. At a conference held by the University of Chicago, where Saunders spent most of his professional life, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, the eyes of most participants (mine among them) were moist as speaker after speaker recalled the significant and selfless ways in which Saunders had helped them during the early stages of their careers. Saunders was a tireless worker for causes mathematical and academic. As an example, something like seven years ago, NAS issued a small position pamphlet outlining the reasons for initiating an evaluation process of graduate advisers by graduate students on a yearly basis. The pamphlet even contained a proposed form. Your reaction may be close to mine when I first received that pamphlet, at least everyone to whom I described that in as neutral a manner as possible shared my reaction. That has to be something like proposing cleaning spots off clothing with concentrated sulphuric acid. Saunders and I were spending an afternoon together, while he happened to be in Philadelphia. As we sat in my office for a short time, he pushed the pamphlet toward me and asked if I would glance at it and how I felt about it. I said that I had read it and felt that the suggestion was an abomination. Now, here's where our styles differed: Saunders said that we must do something about it, I had read the pamphlet and just resigned myself to having its suggestions come to pass. We discussed what could be done, and decided to enlist Is Singer's help with it. Is agreed with us completely and just happened to be on the appropriate NAS committee for doing something about it. He brought it up and argued it to a tie vote (from a "done deal"). Am I being too dramatic when I venture that that probably kept American graduate education as one of the things in which we can continue to take great pride? I'll end this reminiscence with a short humorous anecdote along the same lines as the preceding paragraph (helpful "activism" by Saunders). This was told to me by one of our colleagues. That colleague was at an NAS meeting at which the Chair held up a letter and proclaimed, "This is from Saunders Mac Lane. I hate Saunders! He always sends me letters like this; He's always right - and I always have to do something about it." Kindest, Dick 23-Apr-2005 15:41:33 -0300,10867;000000000000-00000014