Obituaries | Faculty

JASON WOLFE, 73, professor of biology emeritus, died Dec. 23, 2014. He joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1969 after receiving his BA from Rutgers and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and completing two post-doctoral fellowships at Kings College, University of London, and Johns Hopkins. He taught cell biology, human biology, biology of aging and the elderly, and structural biology at Wesleyan for 39 years.

In his research, Wolfe asked big questions about how reproduction and aging are regulated. With funding from NIH and NSF, he produced an enviable body of work published in the major cell biology journals—always mentoring undergraduates and graduate students with compassion and insight. He led the effort that resulted in Wesleyan’s first Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grant for Undergraduate Life Science Education, establishing a program that has provided decades of support for hundreds of undergraduates. In retirement, he twice offered his popular general education course in human biology and published his last Biology Open research paper in 2014 with four former Wesleyan undergraduate co-authors.

He is survived by his wife, Vera Schwarcz, the Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, professor of history, as well as three children and five grandchildren.

GEORGE R. CREEGER, 89, professor of English, emeritus, died Nov. 1, 2014. He joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1951 after receiving his B.A. at DePauw University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Yale. He taught American literature in the English Department for nearly 50 years. An expert on romantic poetry—particularly Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Byron—and on the works of Herman Melville, he was also a generalist who brought some of his other passions into the classroom through courses on Early Connecticut Houses and Opera as Myth and Literature. He served as Dean of the College from 1971–1973 as well as chair of the faculty from 1991–1992. He was a brilliant teacher whose deep resonant voice was instantly recognizable, and he was much beloved by a devoted following of students. He was the first recipient of the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching when it was inaugurated in 1993.

He is survived by a son, Christopher (Kit); his daughter, Katie; and two grandsons. He is predeceased by his wife, Elva, and by a son, Carl.

JOHN FRAZER, 82, Wesleyan professor of art, emeritus, who was a teacher, artist, and scholar in painting, drawing, and film, died July 7, 2014. Originally from Texas, he graduated from the University of Texas with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and subsequently continued his studies at the Yale School of Art and Architecture where he earned a Master of Fine Arts. He began his career at Wesleyan in 1959, where he was regarded as a gifted teacher. He retired in 2001 after more than 40 years of service. In his creative work, he was primarily a painter. His paintings found audiences at more than 40 exhibitions throughout the country, with venues ranging from the Yale University Gallery and the Kaufman Gallery in New York, to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Kawasaki Gallery in Osaka, Japan. He directed eight documentary films, including Balasaraswati, a study of the South Indian dancer Tanjore Balasaraswati. In addition to his creative work he was a respected scholar, publishing in the area of film studies and art with articles about, among others, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, documentary filmmaking, and the early years of cinema. He was instrumental in establishing Wesleyan’s Program in Film Studies and was commissioned to direct a documentary for the college’s sesquicentennial in the early 1970s. Aside from his professional life, he was an active member of the Middletown community, serving on the Middletown Commission on the Arts and Committee for Design and Preservation. Susan MAT ’62, his wife of many years, who taught French at Wesleyan, predeceased him in 1992. He is survived by his spouse, Will Hall, his daughter, Katherine Frazer Thayer, and her husband, Scott Thayer.

PETER S. WHARTON, professor of chemistry emeritus and the person who introduced the Wharton Reaction, died Apr. 28, 2014. He was 82. An alumnus of Cambridge University, he received two master’s degrees and a PhD from Yale University. After completing post-doctoral study at Columbia University, he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin in 1960. He attained the rank of full professor at the University of Wisconsin before joining the Wesleyan faculty in 1968. A gifted organic chemist, he introduced generations of Wesleyan students to the rigors of organic chemistry. He was also known for his musical ability and played the piano, in addition to continuing to bike, hike, and travel until a year ago. He was predeceased by his first wife, Ethel Hoffman Wharton. Survivors include his partner, Helen, and five children.

Thomson Whitin, 90, the Chester D. Hubbard Professor of Economics and Social Science, Emeritus, died Dec. 9, 2013.

Whitin had already achieved distinction when he joined the Wesleyan faculty as a professor of economics in 1963. He graduated from Princeton University in 1943 and served as an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II on the aircraft carrier the Bon Homme Richard. Having obtained a doctorate in economics from Princeton University, and teaching there until 1952, he joined the faculty of M.I.T. as an assistant professor. While on leave from M.I.T. from 1956–58, he served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission; subsequently he rejoined the M.I.T. faculty 1958–60 before joining the University of California, Berkeley, as a full professor in 1960. During his long tenure at Wesleyan, he twice served as a visiting professor of administrative science at Yale University and received fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation. He retired in 1993.

The author of two books, The Theory of Inventory Management (Princeton University Press, 1953) and Analysis of Inventory Systems, co-authored with George Hadley (Prentice-Hall, 1963), Whitin also published dozens of scholarly papers and reviews. He served as a consultant to numerous organizations, including the RAND Corporation, Stanford Research Institute, and the U.S. Navy.

The Economics Department will be offering the inaugural Barber/Whitin Prize this spring for the best undergraduate paper in economic theory or institutional economics.

Whitin served as an advocate for the mentally ill through his association with the Connecticut chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Predeceased by his wife, Edith Osborn Sherer, he is survived by four children and three grandchildren.