Ronald Weber ’57 earned his degree in the last class to graduate from Notre Dame’s Department of Journalism and spent his career training future writers and editors.
A professor emeritus of American studies, Weber died March 12. He was 89.
He was born and raised in Mason City, Iowa. After his studies at Notre Dame, he worked for newspapers in Illinois and Iowa, earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Iowa and a doctoral degree in American studies from the University of Minnesota.
He returned to Notre Dame in 1963 as a professor in the Department of Communication Arts. Later, he led a committee that created a program in American studies, which in 1970 merged with the communication arts department and became the Department of American Studies. Weber served as chair of the new department for its first seven years.
The new department combined the study of literature, history and politics with the practice of journalism and communications. Within a half-dozen years, American studies became the fourth largest major by enrollment in the College of Arts & Letters. Weber would advise newly hired professors that their main obligation was “bringing to life” the subject, something he himself practiced in the classroom until his retirement in 2000.
Students frequently sought out Weber’s advice on their own writing. One former student, Ann Therese Palmer ’73, ’75MBA, contributed an article to the Chicago Tribune in 2005 about Weber’s role as a teacher and mentor. She recalled how he “always had time to talk,” helping her “realize the beauty and meaning of the American literature he assigned.” He also devoted hours “outside class marking up my papers so I’d become a more clear, more imaginative writer,” wrote Palmer, who in 2007 edited Thanking Father Ted: Thirty-Five Years of Notre Dame Coeducation.
Weber was a Fulbright lecturer in Portugal in 1968-69, and he received a second Fulbright to the universities of Coimbra and Lisbon in 1982. He earned research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University.
Weber’s prolific writing career included contributions to this magazine. He was the author or editor of 19 books of nonfiction and fiction, among them murder mystery novels centered on fly fishing in northern Michigan. Two of his nonfiction titles, Hired Pens and The Midwestern Ascendancy in American Writing, drew praise from a Publishers Weekly reviewer who called Weber “one of the finest writers on writers.”
On campus, he served on the Faculty Senate, the Student Life Council, the board of the University Press and the advisory board of Scholastic, the student magazine. He was honored with Notre Dame’s Faculty Award in 1976 for outstanding service to the University.
Weber was preceded in death by Patricia, his wife of 63 years, and a daughter, Andrea Weber ’82. He is survived by two daughters, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Walter R. Johnson was widely known for using computers to solve complex problems in physics and mathematics. Notre Dame’s physics department gained an international reputation in relativistic atomic structure theory in large part because of the work of Johnson, who served on the faculty for five decades. The Frank M. Freimann Professor of Physics emeritus died January 28 at the age of 95.
A native of Richmond, Virginia, Johnson earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Michigan. He joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1958.
In his early teaching years, he took students at night to the Bendix Corporation offices in South Bend to do calculations on the manufacturer’s computer, which could perform 15 multiplications a second — 15 times as many as the University’s computer at the time.
“When they weren’t using their computer, they let us use it,” Johnson recalled late in his career. “The emphasis was to try to do things that people normally would do with pencil and paper, but you can’t get far that way. That’s been kind of the story of my research. During the time I’ve been working in this area, there has been this incredible development of computers.”
He published more than 250 papers, directed 21 doctoral dissertations and three times won the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s prestigious awards for senior scientists. He was physics department chair from 1982 to 1985 and served as a visiting professor or guest scientist at Harvard College Observatory, the Paris Observatory, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Frankfurt in Germany.
Friends recall a modest, hard-working academician and a true gentleman. “He was a joy to work with,” says Jonathan Sapirstein, a professor of physics and astronomy emeritus who collaborated with Johnson on research for a decade.
Upon Johnson’s retirement in 2008, some of the world’s most respected physicists paid tribute to him during an atomic physics symposium on campus. Johnson said he was proudest of his research collaborations at Notre Dame and his contact with more than 10,000 “very bright undergraduate and graduate physics majors in courses on electromagnetism, classical mechanics, atomic physics and numerical methods.”
Johnson was an enthusiastic bicyclist who made long-distance rides across large sections of the country, enjoyed watching the Tour de France on television and witnessed the race in person several times.
He is survived by his wife, Sally. He was predeceased by his first wife, Ruby, in 1987.
Charles F. Kulpa Jr. studied the metabolisms of microbes — tiny living things far too small to be seen with the naked eye — and investigated ways to use such creatures to degrade pollutants in the environment.
Kulpa “used a novel combination of molecular, biochemical and cellular approaches to determine how microbes detoxified these pollutants, and he was among the first microbiologists to embrace the new field of ‘biotechnology’ that is now so fundamental to science,” says Gary Lamberti, the Rev. Julius A. Nieuwland, CSC, Professor of Aquatic Science.
A professor emeritus of biological sciences, Kulpa died April 30. He was 80.
Born in Jackson, Michigan, Kulpa earned three degrees at the University of Michigan and joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1972.
In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he served as the faculty contact for Notre Dame undergraduates who studied in Biosphere 2, an Earth-system-science research facility in Oracle, Arizona. He was chair of the program development committee that led in 1998 to the creation of the University’s environmental sciences major.
In 2001, Kulpa and a colleague tested and discovered platinum alongside South Bend streets and Interstate 80. The amount detected was more than 100 times higher than what occurs in nature, except in mines. They concluded that catalytic converters on motor vehicles emitted platinum group elements in microscopic amounts that accumulated on the banks of roads.
Kulpa studied how to remediate polluted areas by “seeding” them with microbes. He once asked a colleague traveling to Alaska to bring back soil from that state, because he knew it had less pollution than the continental United States. When the dirt arrived, Kulpa was thrilled to find some new microbes to test in his laboratory.
The biologist also served as an associate dean of the College of Science and director of the University’s Center for Bioengineering and Pollution Control. He worked at Notre Dame for 40 years, retiring in 2012.
He was at home among students and colleagues alike. While serving as department chair, Kulpa allowed students to throw pies in his face for a fundraiser, apparently enjoying the experience as much as they did. He held numerous patents and earned many honors, including the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, CSC, Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
Kulpa loved to travel and was an avid golfer. One of his favorite memories was playing the St. Andrews Links in Scotland.
He is survived by his wife, Loretta, four children and 18 grandchildren.
Roger F. Jacobs was librarian of the United States Supreme Court when he was hired away by Notre Dame. It was one of a series of steps in the University’s plan to transform its law library into a major legal research facility.
Jacobs, a professor emeritus of law and former director of the Kresge Law Library, died April 17. He was 87.
Born in Detroit, he served four years in the U.S. Navy, then earned bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Detroit and a master’s degree in library science from the University of Michigan.
After stints at the universities of Detroit, Windsor and Southern Illinois, Jacobs moved to Washington, D.C., to lead the Supreme Court’s library from 1978 to 1985. He then joined Notre Dame Law School as director of the law library and a professor of law and became an associate dean in 1990.
Jacobs’ academic interests included legal research and writing, which he taught to first-year law students. He also taught a course introducing foreign students to the American legal system. His readiness to help instilled in countless students an appreciation for the intricacies of legal research. In 2007, he retired from the law school, which then established the Roger F. Jacobs Collection in Legal Education in his honor.
Jacobs received numerous honors during his career, including a 2000 Presidential Award for outstanding service to the University. In 2001, he received Notre Dame’s Grenville Clark Award, which honors individuals whose volunteer activities and public service advance the cause of peace and human rights.
A sports fan who held season tickets for Notre Dame football and men’s basketball games, Jacobs enjoyed music, golf and running. He is survived by Alice, his wife of 60 years, two daughters, a son and grandchildren.