News & EventsIn Memoriam

Amherst College mourns the passing of Lewis Spratlan, ​the Peter R. Pouncey Professor of Music, Emeritus, on Feb. 9, 2023. He served on the Amherst faculty for 36 years, joining the music department in 1970 and retiring in 2006. 

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a Feb. 14 email to faculty and staff:

Lew’s colleagues in the music department describe him as a consummate musician and generous colleague who inspired generations of young composers to find their own creative voice. “Lew’s unbounded energy for creativity and teaching leaves us with a large and distinguished catalog of musical work stretching over six decades, and a tradition of thoughtful, hands-on music making within our department,” they said. In addition to being an inspiring and beloved teacher, Lew was the founding conductor of the Amherst-Mount Holyoke Orchestra, a chamber music coach, and the conductor and acting director of the Amherst College Orchestra for many years. In addition, during his time at the college, he was known as the best oboe player in the Valley.

An accomplished and widely recognized composer on the international stage, Lew received the Pulitzer Prize in music in 2000 for a concert version of Act Two of his three-act opera titled Life Is A Dream, which was based on a play by the seventeenth-century Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca. The late Jim Maraniss, Professor of Spanish, Emeritus, and Lew’s good friend and colleague at Amherst, wrote the libretto. The opera was premiered in its entirety in 2010 by Santa Fe Opera. Lew also collaborated on other works with other Amherst faculty, including Jenny Kallick, Professor of Music, Emerita, and Connie Congdon, Playwright-in-Residence, Emerita. Lew’s other honors include the Charles Ives Opera Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as Guggenheim, Rockefeller, National Endowment for the Arts, and MacDowell Fellowships, among many other accolades. His music continues to be performed regularly around the world. 

Lew earned undergraduate (in composition and theory of music) and graduate degrees (in composition) from Yale University and taught and conducted at Penn State University, Tanglewood, and the Yale Summer School of Music.

For more information, see this obituary published in The Boston Globe.

Planning is under way for a memorial service on campus this spring. As information becomes available, it will be posted here.

Amherst College mourns the passing of Tanya Leise, the Brian E. Boyle Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, on Jan. 18, 2023. 

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a Jan. 20 email to the campus community:

An applied mathematician who was the first woman mathematician to be tenured at Amherst, Tanya focused her research on mathematical modeling, particularly biomathematics (especially circadian and ultradian behavioral rhythms)—publishing widely. Her 2006 co-authored (with Kurt Bryan) article on the linear algebra behind Google is considered a landmark expository piece. A beloved teacher, Tanya particularly enjoyed teaching courses that included some applications: linear algebra, multivariable calculus, mathematical modeling, wavelet and Fourier analysis, and other applied mathematics electives. She was dedicated to student-faculty collaborative research and was actively engaged in conducting research with students both during the academic year and as part of Amherst summer programs.

Tanya earned a B.S. degree in mathematics from Stanford, with honors, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, also in mathematics, from Texas A&M University. She taught at several other institutions before coming to Amherst as a visiting assistant professor in 2004 and was appointed to a tenure-track position here in 2007; Tanya became a tenured professor in 2013, and she was promoted to the rank of full professor in 2018.

After taking medical leave and teaching remotely during the pandemic, Tanya was delighted to return to the classroom and her department last spring and this fall. As recently as last week, she was part of interviews, via Zoom, with candidates for a tenure-track position in the mathematics and statistics department. She was also looking forward to her sabbatical this spring. A core member of her department, Tanya served as department chair, math colloquia organizer, and comprehensive exam director, in addition to many other roles. She is also credited with creating Amherst’s applied mathematics curriculum. Tanya contributed to the life of the college in myriad ways, serving on the Committee of Six and the Committee on Priorities and Resources (including as chair), among many other bodies.

Beyond Amherst, Tanya was a talented violist, avid reader, and lover of classical music and animals. Her dogs, Bonnie and Maisie, accompanied her to the office on a regular basis. She took perhaps her greatest joy in her family.  Our hearts go out to Tanya’s husband, Andrew Cohen, a professor of psychology at UMass-Amherst, and to Tanya and Andrew’s daughter, Adira, a student at the university, as well as to all of Tanya’s colleagues and students.

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Amherst mourns the passing of Donald White, professor of German, emeritus, on Dec. 21, 2022. He began his career at Amherst in 1957 and taught in the German department for more than four decades, retiring in 1999.  He arrived at Amherst soon after earning a master’s degree from Yale; he also received a bachelor’s degree in 1953 from Yale and, in 1963, a Ph.D.  According to his colleagues in Amherst’s German department, Don “worked for Amherst College tirelessly.  He was beloved by his students and his colleagues alike, and he will be missed by all who knew him."

His translation of The Island of Second Sight, a German novel by Albert Vigoleis Thelen, was first published by Galileo Press of Cambridge, England, in 2010.  Three years later, it was published in the U.S. by the Overlook Press of New York City. Don earned the PEN Translation Prize for 2013 and a Helen and Kurt Wolfe award from the Goethe Institute.  In all, there have been five editions of his award-winning translation.

Don was principal violist with the Pioneer Valley Symphony and played in chamber groups for many colleges and universities in the area.  

A memorial celebration of Don’s life will take place on Saturday, May 6, 2023, at 11:30 a.m., at the Canadian Club in Barre, Vt.  As more information becomes available, we will share it here.  Please see Don’s obituary for more information. 

On Sept. 5, 2022, Professor Hideo Higuchi, who served for many years as director of Amherst House at Dōshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, died peacefully at the age of ninety from complications of pneumonia. His last words were typical of his ironic, self-effacing humor. As the hospital staff prepared to install a feeding tube, he remarked, "I want to eat rāmen. I think I should taste just a teaspoon of soup."

Born in Matsumoto City, he studied at Agatagaoka High School and then at Dōshisha University, joining the faculty there in 1967. Like all Dōshisha students and faculty, he was gratefully aware that the university had been founded in 1875 by Joseph Hardy Neesima, a Tokyo-born Amherst College graduate, but Higuchi's special love affair with Amherst began in 1982–1983, when he spent a year in Amherst on a study-abroad program.   

In his role as director of Amherst House, Higuchi was known for the patience  and perseverance with which he dealt with all the inevitable administrative problems that arise between a small American liberal-arts college and a very large, two-campus Japanese university. 

In the course of his distinguished career as a scholar, Higuchi translated a number of works from English to Japanese. One of his books was a result of his Amherst connections. Painfully aware of the difficulties encountered by Japanese students of English, Higuchi asked Amherst College professor Allen Guttmann to write a short book on American sports, a topic of more interest to most Dōshisha undergraduates than a close study of Hawthorne and Melville. Higuchi translated the book, added the necessary explanatory notes, and arranged for publication.

Higuchi leaves behind his wife, Fusako, who was also active as a skillful facilitator of Amherst-Dōshisha relations; their son, Jō; their daughter, Maya; and their ­­four grandchildren. To the College he left a material symbol of his devotion—the magnificent Japanese cherry tree that stands between Converse Hall and the Arms Music Building. The cherry blossoms are his elegy.

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Amherst College mourns the passing of Franklin Odo, the John Woodruff Simpson Lecturer and former John J. McCloy ’16 Visiting Professor of American Institutions and International Diplomacy in the Department of American Studies, on Sept. 28, 2022. 

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Catherine Epstein wrote the following in a Sept. 30 email to faculty and staff:

We have been fortunate to have Franklin as a member of our community since 2015. His colleagues praise his tremendous intellect and range of knowledge; his generosity of spirit and kindness; his modesty; and his mentorship of faculty and students. I understand that a private family memorial service is being planned.

A renowned scholar, activist for racial justice, steward of Asian American culture, and internationally recognized leader in the field of Asian American studies, Franklin focused his life’s work on the history and lived experiences of Asian Americans. He was educated at Princeton and Harvard and went on to serve in many important roles over the course of a long and distinguished career, including as founding director of the Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa; president of the Association for Asian American Studies; senior advisor to the National Park Service’s National Historic Landmarks Program; chief of the Asian Division of the Library of Congress; and founding director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Pacific American Center. Franklin was a prolific writer, authoring, among other works, books that included Voices from the Canefields: Folksongs from Japanese Immigrant Workers in Hawai`i, No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai`i during WWII, and A Pictorial History of the Japanese in Hawaii, 1885–1924 (with Kazuko Sinoto), and In Movement: A Pictorial History of Asian America. He also co-edited a groundbreaking anthology titled Roots: An Asian American Reader and served as a curator and was involved in numerous media projects.

At Amherst, Franklin taught courses on race and public history and memory, among other topics, inspiring our students inside and outside the classroom. He supervised multiple theses in Asian American studies, helped his students create a podcast on Asian Americans and affirmative action, and worked with the Mead Art Museum. Franklin provided students with unique experiences, including a field trip in 2017 over spring break to Washington for students in his course "Japanese Americans and WWII," accompanied by Professor Robert Hayashi. As part of the trip, Franklin arranged for a tour of a Smithsonian exhibition commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by Franklin Roosevelt, which authorized the forced removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans. He had been the principal scholar-advisor to this project and co-led the tour along with Smithsonian curators.

More broadly, Franklin was a deeply admired advisor to the Asian Students Association and was very involved in the Five College Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program. He also has played a key role in current efforts to establish an Asian American Studies program at the college (the foundation of which is under way with a current “cluster hire” in three departments). His loss will be deeply felt.

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We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below. Login is also required if you wish to read comments left by others.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below.

We invite members of the Amherst College community to leave notes and remembrances by logging in and clicking “Add comment” below.