Volume 25 · Number 1 · Fall 2007
In Memoriam
G. Eric Bradford
G. Eric Bradford, was hired at UC Davis in 1957 to start a sheep breeding program. Over the next 50 years, he would become known worldwide for his research on the genetics of reproduction and growth in livestock, with a focus on increasing global food supplies. He was one of the first livestock breeders to work with laboratory animals, discovering a “high growth” gene in mice and a gene for large litter size in Javanese sheep. In 1978–94, he was a principal investigator in the Small Ruminant Collaborative Research Support Program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, carrying out studies in Kenya, Indonesia and Morocco. He retired from UC Davis in 1993 but remained active, helping to establish the Agricultural Sustainability Institute in 2005. He died in July of heart failure at age 77. More . . .
Roy De Forest, an art faculty member in 1965–92, was one of the originators of a Northern California art movement sometimes called “California funk” — a classification he disliked. His work, which is now exhibited throughout the United States, includes paintings of colorful dogs and other whimsical creatures. “Roy was a man with a good and great sense of irony,” recalled artist Wayne Thiebaud, a professor emeritus at UC Davis and longtime friend and colleague. “He was not interested in any kind of preciousness, prestige or any of that nonsense. He pursued his work with real genuineness, regardless of what others thought.” A resident of Port Costa, he was 77 when he died in May after a brief illness. His work — and that of UC colleagues Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud and William T. Wiley — will be featured in a traveling exhibit that will premiere on campus Sept. 27-Dec. 9, 2007, and then stop at four other cities in California and Nevada throughout the next two years. For additional information about Mr. De Forest . . . To see his art . . .
Charles Nash
At the start of each chemistry course, Charles Nash liked to tell his students that his goal was to make himself obsolete, so that by the end of the quarter they wouldn’t need him anymore. “Whatever I do, I’m going to do my best to make you think like a chemist,” he said. Professor Emeritus Nash, whose approach earned him a 1978 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Davis Division of the Academic Senate, died in July from complications of pneumonia at age 75. He was the first faculty member to serve two back-to-back terms as chair of the UC Davis Academic Senate, from 1987 to 1991 — cowriting UC Davis’ “Principles of Community,” helping revise campus English requirements so that entering students who needed additional preparation took classes at community colleges, rather than at UC Davis, and helping develop a policy to allow the university to remove incompetent professors, while protecting against arbitrary dismissal. A faculty member since 1957, he remained active on campus and in the community after retiring in 1992. Dr. Nash was the subject of an Aggies Remember article in the spring 2007 issue of UC Davis Magazine. More . . .
Robert Scari, emeritus professor of Spanish, died in August after a prolonged illness. He was 78. A faculty member in 1965–2002, he was an authority on Spanish-American and peninsular Spanish literature, including the works of novelist Emilia Pardo Bazán and philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. He served as chair of the department of Spanish and classics in 1980–88 and received an Outstanding Faculty Adviser Award for 1996–97.