Passing of Prof. Tom Head

With sadness we announce the passing on Nov. 10, 2017 of our colleague Tom Head. Tom received his PhD at the University of Kansas in 1962. His earlier work was in algebra. His textbook “Modules; a primer of structure theorems” was published in 1974. But Tom's most notable work was concerned with interactions between molecular biology and formal language theory. It was in this field that about half of his 86 research papers were written. In 2002 he received the annually given Yellow Tulip Award for his early contribution to DNA computing. In 2004 he was presented with the festschrift volume of papers: “Aspects of Biomolecular Computing.” Tom joined our department in 1988 and retired in 2005. He was a delightful colleague and he will be missed.