Volume 25 · Number 2 · Winter 2008
In Memoriam
Charles Hayes Jr.
During his 20 years as a campus police officer, William Essex worked some of UC Davis’ highest-profile cases, including the bludgeoning death of a physics lecturer in a men’s bathroom in 1985 and a $2.5 million arson fire of an unfinished veterinary building in 1987. A former Anaheim police officer, he served six years as UC Davis’ assistant police chief and 18 months as acting chief, but declined a permanent appointment to the chief’s post to retire to Utah in 1992. He died in Riverdale, Utah, in August at age 67.
Charles Hayes Jr., who taught mathematics to generations of UC Davis students from 1947 to 1978, died in August at his Davis home at age 91. He served as the math department’s second chair in 1955–64, helping to establish the Ph.D. program in mathematics and to launch the campus’s first research computer center. He also helped start the UC Davis chapter of Phi Beta Kappa honor society in 1968. He wrote a 1964 textbook, Concepts of Real Analysis, and co-authored the 1970 book Derivation and Martingales.
William McCoy, a former librarian who oversaw construction of Shields Library’s east and south wings in 1964 and 1967 and construction of the Physical Sciences Library in 1971, died in his Davis home in October. He was 83. He joined Shields Library in 1962, became associate university librarian in 1964 and retired in 1985 as acting university librarian. He also served more than 30 years as selection committee chair for the campus chapter of Phi Beta Kappa honor society. More . . .
Richard Oi
Richard Oi, a professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology, was so respected by students that in 1992 they established an annual teaching award in his name. The medical school honored him a decade later with another namesake, an endowment supporting women’s health education. A former Air Force gynecologist, Dr. Oi joined the medical school in 1973 and directed the OB/GYN residency training program during 1983–93. He retired in 1994, but agreed to return to teaching part time, which he continued until shortly before his death from a heart attack in September. He was 77.
Arthur “Milt” Smith, Ph.D. ’48, who helped shape physiology programs at UC Davis and pioneered studies on the effects of gravity on living organisms, died of congestive heart failure in his Davis home in October. He was 91. A faculty member since 1950, he helped found the Department of Animal Physiology (a precursor to the Section of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior), the Chronic Acceleration Research Unit and the UC White Mountain High Altitude Research Station. One of the first board-certified aerospace physiologists and a founding member of the International Society for Gravitational Physiology and the Galileo Foundation, he became an emeritus professor in 1986. More . . .
Kenneth Tanji í58, M.S. í61
Kenneth Tanji ’58, M.S. ’61, a noted water scientist who helped state and federal agencies address selenium contamination that poisoned wildlife at Kesterson Reservoir and developed ways to reduce salt buildup in croplands and underground water supplies, died in Davis in September from bacterial pneumonia. The professor emeritus of hydrology was 75. He received public service awards from the UC Davis Academic Senate, the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the American Society of Civil Engineering for his efforts to improve water quality and manage irrigation runoff. He retired from the faculty in 1998 after a 40-year UC Davis career but remained active in his field, co-authoring a report for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization and numerous scientific articles.