Nov 23, 2009 | 08:22
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In Memoriam
Eli Sercarz, 75, pioneer in immunology research
Nov 17, 2009 by Roxanne Moster
Eli Sercarz, a renowned immunologist and UCLA professor emeritus of microbiology and molecular genetics whose research helped advance the understanding of autoimmune diseases, cancer and other disorders, died Nov. 3 in Topanga, Calif. He was 75.
"Eli Sercarz was a giant intellect and a devoted mentor, colleague and friend. He cannot be replaced," said Dr. Bevra Hahn, professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Sercarz's research helped reshape the field of immunology. His studies focused on understanding how and why some white blood cells initiate immune responses that lead to autoimmunity — a state in which the body begins to attack its own cells — while others are protective and able to inhibit such responses.
Among his many contributions to immunology, Sercarz discovered "cryptic determinants" — regions of a protein that are generally hidden from the immune system but which may be presented to white blood cells in the setting of an autoimmune disease or cancer. He also detailed a process known as "determinant spreading," by which an autoreactive immune response continues to evolve in the body and spread to additional white blood cells, which in turn respond to further and more diverse targets.
Sercarz was born in New York. He earned his Ph.D. in immunology from Harvard University in 1960 and held postdoctoral research fellowships at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through 1962. The following year, he joined the UCLA faculty as an assistant professor of immunology in what was then the department of bacteriology.
Sercarz eventually attained the prestigious rank of "professor above scale," a status reserved for UCLA professors who have made novel and important contributions to their fields. He served at UCLA for 34 years and received the title of professor emeritus upon his retirement in 1997.
"He was an enormously creative thinker," said Dr. Jeffery Miller, chair of the UCLA Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics. "The work Eli Sercarz performed has applications that extend throughout immunology and beyond. Eli's research helps lead the way for developing new treatments for autoimmune diseases, novel cancer therapies based on activating antitumor immune responses, and better vaccines for infectious diseases. Most recently, Eli's laboratory was trying to understand how the immune system triggers type 1 diabetes in the hope of finding ways to control it. His insights and ideas will have an impact far into the future."
After leaving UCLA, Sercarz accepted a position at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, where he remained for five years. He subsequently served as head of the division of immune regulation at the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies in San Diego.
Sercarz was a two-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, an exchange appointee of the National Academy of Sciences, a co-recipient of the Nachman International Prize for research in rheumatology and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies. Sercarz was listed by Thomas Scientific as one of the most frequently cited immunologists in the world. In 2007, he received the American Association of Immunologists Excellence in Mentoring Award.
Throughout his career, Sercarz traveled the world as an invited lecturer. He addressed the National Academy of Sciences–Institute of Medicine Commission on Vaccine Priorities and presented the Burroughs Wellcome Lecture at Johns Hopkins University in 1998.
"Eli Sercarz was one of the most highly esteemed immunologists in the world. He will be remembered not only for research that changed his field but also as a beloved teacher, mentor and friend," said Dr. Jonathan Braun, chair of the department of pathology and laboratory medicine of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Few men can claim such a huge legacy of scientific achievement; fewer still will be so widely remembered and missed."
The family is planning a celebration of Sercarz's life on Nov. 29.
Valerie Oppenheimer, 77, UCLA sociologist
Nov 17, 2009 by Meg Sullivan
Valerie Oppenheimer, a UCLA sociologist known for pioneering research on the effects of employment trends on marriage and the American family, died Nov. 2 of a stroke and heart attack at her home in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles, said her son Chris Oppenheimer. She was 77.
The author of more than 25 studies on gender, employment, marriage and the family, Oppenheimer taught for 25 years at UCLA, rising from a lecturer to a full professor. But even after retiring in 1994, she remained active in her field, publishing an influential study in 2003 about the role economic instability plays in men's tendency to delay marriage to increasingly older ages.
Oppenheimer was the recipient of two of her field's most prominent prizes. In 1979, the American Sociological Association honored her with the Jessie Bernard Award, which recognizes achievement in "scholarly work that has enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society."
This year, she became the inaugural recipient of the Harriet B. Presser Award from the Population Association of America, a biennial award honoring a record of sustained contribution in gender and demography.
"Valerie was the first demographer to document and explain the great increase in married women working outside the home, which has been one of the most important demographic trends of the last half-century," said Andrew Cherlin, a former student and the Benjamin H. Griswold III Professor of Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University.
Having conducted postdoctoral research at the London School of Economics after earning a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer first nabbed attention for her research on women surging into the workplace in the 1960s.
In a pathbreaking article published in 1967, Oppenheimer analyzed the interaction of labor supply and demand to explain the rapidly increasing employment rates of women in the post-World War II years, wrote University of North Carolina sociologist Philip Cohen in the blog "Family Inequality."
In a 1968 article, Oppenheimer provided documentation for high levels of gender segregation in the workplace at the time, finding that 67 percent of clerical workers were women and that women made up 88 percent of the workforce in the communications industry.
"Her dispassionate and methodical, scientific tone in these articles masks the cutting-edgeness of a woman independently doing theoretically ambitious, quantitative, demographic work in the U.S. at that time," wrote Cohen, an associate professor and director of graduate studies at UNC–Chapel Hill.
Oppenheimer's 1970 book "The Female Labor Force in the United States" was the first extended treatment of the rise of married women in the U.S. workforce, said Cherlin, the author of the new book "The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today" (Random House).
Oppenheimer also is credited with debunking the "specialization and trading model," a theory that held that marriages are most stable and that couples best maximize their fortunes when they combine wives' unpaid work with husbands' paid employment.
"She did not predict or advocate for the end of marriage, but rather for its reconfiguration as a two-earner partnership, albeit one that would probably be less common and less stable than the trading-based marriages were before," Cohen wrote.
Oppenheimer's most famous piece was published in 1988 and dealt with an emerging demographic trend: couples who postponed marriage, said Megan Sweeney, a UCLA associate professor of sociology who specializes in family research. At a time when prevailing wisdom held that women were putting off marriage because new opportunities in the workplace made the institution less attractive to them, Oppenheimer argued that the situation was more complex. By applying job-search theory from economics to the process of looking for a spouse, she introduced important new ideas about marriage timing.
"Part of the process of evaluating potential mates is figuring out how compatible partners will be in the future, which Oppenheimer argued was at least in part related to the kind of work people do," Sweeney said. "If a woman anticipates staying at home throughout much of her marriage, the nature of her future work is fairly straightforward to anticipate, although the nature of men's future work in the labor market may be less certain.
"Oppenheimer was interested in how this process of finding a spouse changed as women increasingly expected to remain employed throughout their adult lives and as young men's future position in the labor force became less predictable," she said. "She argued that uncertainty about the future characteristics of potential mates complicates the process of finding an appropriate spouse and leads to a delay in marriage."
Oppenheimer's studies have been cited in more than 1,000 other publications, Sweeney said. Nearly a quarter of those citations have occurred in the past five years, meaning that fellow sociologists are finding the work increasingly relevant as time goes on.
"We look at marriage completely differently, thanks to Valerie Oppenheimer," Sweeney said.
Born in London and raised in New York City, Oppenheimer rarely spoke of her upbringing, said her son Chris, 39.
Oppenheimer's husband, the pulmonologist Edward Anthony Oppenheimer, died in 2005.
"They were married for 40 years," said Chris, a construction supervisor in Indio, Calif. "I never heard them yell at each other. If they disagreed, they'd exchange three or four words about it and then go into separate rooms. Then five minutes later, they'd come back together and everything was fine."
In addition to her son Chris and his wife, Jackie, Oppenheimer is survived by four grandchildren, Brandon, 20, Marley, 15, Tiara, 9, and Teagan, 6, as well as a great-grandchild, Carlitos, 6.
A private funeral is being planned by the family. A memorial service is being organized by the UCLA Department of Sociology; for details, visit http://www.soc.ucla.edu.
Burton R. Clark, professor emeritus of education, dies at age 88
Nov 03, 2009 by Shaena Engle
Burton R. Clark, renowned educator, researcher, and professor emeritus of education in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS), died in Los Angeles on Oct. 28 at the age of 88 after a long illness. Widely acknowledged as one of the great sociologists of higher education, Clark made substantial contributions to virtually every area of the field, thereby defining its study for generations.
In his recent work, he focused on the comparative analysis of national systems of higher education and their specific forms of university organization, as well as on the transformation and sustainability of proactive, entrepreneurial universities around the globe.
“Professor Clark’s death is a great loss to us all,” said Aimée Dorr, dean of GSE&IS. “He was one of the first researchers to view American colleges and universities as communities and over the past five decades developed insightful, provocative work that has laid the foundation for future studies in the field of social science research in higher education.”
Clark began his study of sociology at UCLA, where he received a B.A. in 1949 and a Ph.D. in 1954. During the course of a long and distinguished career, he taught at five leading American research universities: Stanford (sociology, 1953-1956), Harvard (education, 1956-1958), UC Berkeley (education, 1958-1966), and Yale (sociology, 1966-1980), where he served as chair. He returned to UCLA as the Allan M. Cartter Professor of Higher Education in 1980, chairing the Comparative Higher Education Research Group from 1980 to 1991 and publishing his seminal work, "The Higher Education System" in 1983.
“I can think of no one who has contributed to our field more than Bob Clark,” said Ann Morey, former vice president of the Postsecondary Education Division (J) of the American Educational Research Association. “His writings influenced our understanding and scholarship in higher education from its early beginnings as a field of study until today. His most recent work, 'On Higher Education: Selected Writings 1956-2006,' is a testament to his extraordinary career and achievements.”
Clark’s early research concentrated on organizational studies of adult education, community colleges, and small private colleges. He later focused on universities and authored some of the earliest typologies of student and faculty cultures in them.
His 1973 article “Development of the Sociology of Higher Education” stands as a landmark contribution to the understanding of economic, political, and social class influences in the development of mass education. He also expanded the scope of his work internationally by looking at the ways institutions of higher education in other countries were coping with change.
Clark received the American College Testing Program Research Award in 1979 from the American Educational Research Association for his studies of American universities and colleges. The Association for the Study of Higher Education named him the first recipient of its Research Achievement Award in 1985, and three years later he accepted the first Distinguished Research Award of Division J, Postsecondary Education from the American Educational Research Association. In 1989 he was granted the Outstanding Book Award of the American Educational Research Association for his work, "The Academic Life," and in 1997 he received the Howard Bowen Distinguished Career Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education.
In 1978, Clark was elected to the National Academy of Education, where he chaired its Section on Politics, Economics, Sociology and Anthropology of Education and served as vice president of the academy for the four years thereafter. He was president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, a fellow of the British Society for Research into Higher Education and a Distinguished Member of the European Association for Institutional Research in 1997. The following year, he received the Comenius Medal from UNESCO and was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from the universities of Strathclyde and Turku.
Clark was convinced that graduate students and young academics ought to “commit to qualitative, context-defined research” and that “research for use” combined with “research for understanding” yields more dependable analyses of higher education systems.
Gary Rhoades, a former postdoctoral student, remarked “In the prime of his life, in transitioning to retirement and in handling the approach of his death, Bob was ever a model for how a fundamentally good human being should behave and be.”
Clark is survived by his wife, Adele, and his daughter, Adrienne Clark Chandhok.
Hugh Grauel, UCLA Producers Program co-founder
Oct 29, 2009 by Kelsey Sharpe
Hugh Grauel, professor in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT) from 1966-1987, died on Sept. 20 in Pasadena at the age of 91. Grauel was the co-founder, along with John Cauble, of the Producers Program in theater and film in 1984. The two-year M.F.A. program is designed for people who wish to pursue careers as creative producers or executives in the entertainment industry.
Grauel remains fondly remembered by former students and colleagues.
“He was a warm and inspiring teacher,” said Sheila Roberts, director of academic personnel for TFT. “His encouragement and support meant so much to all of us who were lucky enough to be part of the Producers Program during the early years when he was at the helm.”
Bill Ward, chair of the theater department, said, “Hugh was a great guy and someone who always thought outside the divisions of theater and film in the creation of the Producers Program.” Ward recalled being welcomed by Grauel when he joined the faculty in 1965, and said that “through [Grauel’s] good work, he created a legacy that outlives him. May we all aspire to be as collaborative, kind and generous.”
Grauel was buried on Oct. 28 in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Memorial Park; per his wishes there was no ceremony.
Henry Hopkins, first director of the Hammer Museum
Sep 29, 2009 by Shilo Munk
Henry T. Hopkins, a prominent leader in the arts who at various times led the Hammer Museum at UCLA and the San Francisco Museum of Art — which was renamed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art during his stewardship — has died. He was 81.
Hopkins died Sunday of a brain tumor at his residence near the UCLA campus, where he taught for many years.
Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, Hopkins received his Masters of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1955. From 1952 to 1954, he served as a photographer in the United States Army, stationed in Augsburg, Germany. In 1957, Hopkins came to UCLA where he was a graduate student in art history and completed course work toward a Ph.D. He taught art history at UCLA Extension from 1959-1968 to many important Los Angeles collectors.
In 1960, Hopkins opened the Huysman Gallery in Los Angeles, where he was the first to show young artists that included Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell and Joe Goode. A year later, he became the assistant curator of modern art for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and established its education department. After eight years, Hopkins left to become the director of the Fort Worth Art Center Museum. Between 1974 and 1986, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art rose to international prominence under his leadership.
In 1986, Hopkins returned to Los Angeles to head the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation where he became executive vice president before leaving in 1991 for UCLA.
Hopkins painted and drew throughout his career, but showed work only rarely in group exhibitions since he felt it to be a conflict of interest with his museum work. He was an expert in 20th century art and authored three books on contemporary artists: "Fifty West Coast Artists" (1982), "Clyford Still" (1976) and "California Paintings and Sculpture: The Modern Era" (1976). He also wrote numerous articles published in such journals as ARTnews, Art in America, Art Voices, and Image and Issues.
He is survived by his three children – Victoria Shegoian of San Francisco, John Hopkins of Oceanside, Calif., and Chris Hopkins of Miles City, Mont. – five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
A memorial service is planned for a later date at the Hammer Museum.
UCLA medical physicist Dr. Amos Norman
Aug 21, 2009 by Cynthia Lee
Dr. Amos Norman, professor emeritus in the Radiation Oncology and Radiological Sciences Departments, died August 8 in Woodland Hills at age 87. He co-founded the Medical Physics (now Biomedical Physics) Graduate Program in 1960.
Dr. Norman arrived at UCLA in 1951 and established a career that would encompass more than 50 years of productivity, with more than 250 peer-reviewed publications. He supervised more than 40 postdoctoral fellows, Ph.D. and M.S. students.
Born Nov. 25, 1921, in Vienna, Austria, he received his A.B. in Physics from Harvard in 1943 and then joined the U.S. Army, where he served as an officer during WW II from 1943 to 1946. After military service, he received his M.S. in physics in 1947 and his Ph.D. in biophysics in 1950. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in 1951, all at Columbia University.
Norman arrived at UCLA in 1951 as an assistant professor in the Department of Radiological Sciences, later becoming associate and then full professor. In 1959 he became a diplomat of the American Board of Radiology in radiological physics. In 1991, Professor Norman retired, but remained extremely active, lecturing and performing research until shortly before his death.
One major area of Norman's research was the study of X-ray phototherapy, in which a CT scanner was slightly modified to deliver radiation doses to tumors, using X-rays. Norman, along with several other UCLA co-inventors, was awarded a patent for this work, which stimulated a significant amount of research activity that continues today.
Dr. Norman received many awards, including predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships from the Atomic Energy Commission, predecessor to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He was elected to Sigma Xi (the Scientific Research Society) in 1950. He was honored as a Fellow of the American College of Radiology in 1960 and a Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, which awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.
Dr. Norman was preceded in death by his wife Elaine (Atlas) Norman and is survived by four children, Dr. Dean Norman, Jane Norman, Dr. Kim Norman and Dr. Joyce Norman, and nine grandchildren.
A celebration of his life is being organized for Sept. 8 from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Faculty Center. More details will be announced later.
UCLA Anderson Professor Emeritus J. Fred Weston
Jul 29, 2009 by Susanna Park
J. Fred Weston, professor emeritus and benefactor of UCLA Anderson School of Management, died on July 20 at the age of 93. Professor Weston was renowned for his path-breaking research on mergers and acquisitions, and was an institution builder who mentored numerous outstanding graduate students, including Nobel Prize winning economist William F. Sharpe. Find an obituary here.
Werner Z. Hirsch -- economist and adviser to higher ed leaders
Jul 17, 2009 by Cynthia Lee
Werner Z. Hirsch, a UCLA economist for 46 years who wrote the first U.S. textbook on the economics of state and local government and guided California leaders in higher education on many issues, died July 10 at home in Los Angeles after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 89.
An expert in the field of public financing, law and economics, and urban economics - a field which he helped establish - Hirsch served as a consultant to many agencies, including the joint Economic Committee of Congress, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Commission on Civil Disorders. He completed the first comprehensive economic analysis of privatization of government services and came up with a systematic framework that helped government officials determine when the practice would likely be beneficial.
Informally, he served as an adviser to several UC presidents and chancellors and was part of a group of higher-education leaders that convened regularly to discuss various issues. He was also a member of key committees for the UCLA Academic Senate, the universitywide Senate and the UC Office of the President. From 2000 to 2006, he served on the Board of Directors of the Associated Students UCLA. He also sponsored a representational drawing competition for UCLA undergraduates and graduates and offered $1,500 in prizes.
"Werner Hirsch was a national expert on state and local finance, the use of outsourcing and contracting by governments, and educational policy," said his colleague and collaborator Daniel J.B. Mitchell, professor emeritus of the Anderson Graduate School of Management and the School of Public Affairs. "In his later years, he was particularly concerned with the funding of public higher-educational research universities such as UC. Hirsch viewed the so-called "Michigan Model" - named after an accord between the University of Michigan and the State of Michigan - as an example for UC to follow. The Michigan Model involves an accord between the university and state with regard to limited but guaranteed support, access for state residents, and greater autonomy of the university with regard to tuition and other matters."
Born in 1920 in the small German town of Linz on the Rhein, Hirsch and his family left Germany in 1936 before he finished high school to live in what is now Israel. In 1946, he immigrated to the United States and studied at UC Berkeley, where he received a B.S. degree with highest honors in 1947 and his Ph.D. in 1949 in economics.
His first academic appointment was in the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley, where he worked with Clark Kerr, who later became the first chancellor of Berkeley and the 12th president of UC. In 1951, Hirsch joined the United Nation's Economic Affairs Department; in 1952 the Brookings Institution; and in 1953 the Economics Department of Washington University in St. Louis.
While there, he became the founding director of the Institute of Urban and Regional Studies. Appointed to a committee established by the Ford Foundation to explore the promise of a new subfield of economics, called urban economics, Hirsch later developed a curriculum and research agenda for this new field at the institute.
In 1963, he became an economics professor at UCLA and founding director of its Institute of Government and Public Affairs. His study of the economics of state and local governments provided the material for the first textbook on this subject published in the United States. This work helped guide the California Legislature's reorganization of large urban school districts. He also joined scholars at the RAND Corporation to develop a new planning and budgeting system, which was used by a number of federal departments, including the Department of Defense, as well as some state and local governments.
In 1970, he decided to study law at the UCLA School of Law to contribute to the nascent field of law and economics, for which he later developed a curriculum and developed research using economic theory and econometrics to analyze the effects of existing laws.
His research findings appear in scholarly journals as well as in a number of books on urban economics, including two textbooks.
Although he retired in 1990, he continued to teach undergraduates, his colleagues said; most recently, a seminar in law and economics. "Werner was a great man, a great scholar, faculty member and friend of mine," said Chancellor Emeritus Charles E. Young, who added that Hirsch remained very actively involved with UCLA even after his retirement. "He will certainly be missed. He was a great member of the UCLA faculty and of the campus."
Hirsch is survived by his wife, Hilde Esther, sons Daniel and Joel, daughter Ilona and two grandsons. A campus memorial service is being planned for the fall.
Ethnomusicology founding chair dies
Jun 25, 2009 by Shilo Munk
Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, the founding chair of UCLA's Department of Ethnomusicology, died of lung cancer June 20, at his home in Van Nuys, Calif. He was 81. Jairazbhoy had an international reputation as a researcher, teacher, and administrator, with a comprehensive knowledge of India's folk, classical and popular music. He was the first non-white president of the Society for Ethnomusicology and in 2005 was named Honorary Life Member. Jairazbhoy authored numerous publications and audio and visual documentaries regarding ethnomusicology, many of them focused on Indian music. An entry on his life and work is found in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980 and 2001 editions). In 1975, Jairazbhoy joined the UCLA Department of Music as a full professor. He retired from UCLA as a professor emeritus in 1994. In 2008, Jairazbhoy received the UCLA Dickson Emeritus Award. Jairazbhoy donated his body to the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine Donated Body Program for teaching and research. He is survived by his wife, Dr. Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy, daughters Nishat Jairazbhoy (Spacek), Angela (Jairazbhoy) Schurer, Judy (Jairazbhoy) Lewicki, son Paul Jairazbhoy, and godson Abdul Hamid Sidi. A more extensive obituary is posted on the Ethnomusicology website.
Nathan H. Shapira
Jun 11, 2009 by Emilia Barrosse
Nathan H. Shapira, a UCLA faculty member of more than 40 years and an internationally respected design scholar, died at his home in Santa Monica on May 16. He was 80. A successful scholar, critic and curator, Shapira began working at UCLA in 1963 as head of the department of industrial and interior design. Shapira won many international and national design awards while addressing significant international design conferences and sharing his work with multiple major design publications, including Abitare, Construire and Ottagano. A particularly outstanding accomplishment occurred in 1987, when the city of Trieste, Italy, celebrated his exceptional work on the exhibition, "Quest for Continuity," by honoring him with the title "Cavalieri," the Italian equivalent of knighthood. A memorial for Shapira will be held at a later date.
