Died: November 7, 1996
Bob was a member of Trumbull College, the Yale Repertory Symphony and the Yale Collegium Musicum. His love of music followed him through his life. After Yale, Bob went to Columbia University where he earned his M.S. in 1968 and his Ph.D. in psychology in 1971. The research for his first publication, Formation and Development of a Group of Juvenile Hylobates lar [Gibbon], co-authored with his Yale roommate, Jonathan Lieff, was conducted on Laulanui Island and involved, inter alia, a reunion gathering of all his roomies on the remote island.
From Columbia, Bob secured a position as professor of psychology at the University of Houston — Clear Lake in Houston, Texas. His publications over the subsequent years demonstrate an interest in people on the margins of society: the mentally retarded, institutionalized severely retarded persons, and the effects of territoriality on the retarded and institutionalized elderly persons.
Following his work at the University of Houston, Bob took a position as the director of the Department of Behavioral Medicine at the International Center for the Disabled in Manhattan. Thereafter, he formed his own consulting business, providing testing services in both medical and institutional settings.
His love of music resulted in him serving as the concert master of the Greenwich Village Orchestra.
Bob died of a heart attack in 1996. His daughter Leanne says of him, “I think what we would like his classmates to know about his life is that he would have deeply regretted all that he has missed out on since his passing. He was a person who was deeply philosophical about mankind in general and people specifically. To know how we all turned out (his family and the spouses and generations that have come since, his classmates and colleagues, our culture, our civilization) would have been such a joy to him. His family is very grateful to Yale for honoring his memory.”
Bob is survived by his wife, Ellen, his daughter Leanne, and his son Jason.