Fred Linton Obituary

Fred Linton Obituary

[Wick-Pelletier, Joan]

  Dear all,

I am attaching an obituary that Barbara Mikolajewska (Linton) wrote. It came to me via Carol Wood, Fred's long-time colleague at Wesleyan.

Like those who have already expressed their thoughts, I will miss Fred. He was my unofficial thesis advisor, generous with ideas, guidance, encouragement, and friendship.

Joan


Fred E.J. Linton (1938-1917)

Fred Ernest Julius Linton passed away peacefully on Saturday, September 2, 2017 at the Connecticut Hospice with his wife by his side. He was the beloved husband of 26 years to Barbara Mikolajewska, whom he met in Poland. Fred  was born in Italy on April 8, 1938 and was the only son of Jewish parents who were escaping from Hitler's Germany to the United States of America. Before they got visas for the USA they spend few months in Ecuador. When they  came to the USA, they lived in New York City. Fred studied mathematics at Yale and got his Ph.D. from Columbia University. After graduation he accepted a position at Wesleyan University as a professor of mathematics, where he spent his entire career. He worked on category theory and was a highly-respected mathematician who participated in numerous scientific conferences and discussions.

Fred enjoyed international folk dancing, which he did at Yale and at Columbia.  After he came to Wesleyan, he helped start the folk-dance group `Ajde'  in New Haven, which studied and performed Eastern European folk dances and  music Many years later, the group began holding reunions at a country house in Vermont, where they rent the local town hall for more dancing.

Fred had a very active and curious mind, and after retirement he was still busy solving mathematical and computer science puzzles. Numbers never left his mind.  He loved classical music and traveling, which he did for vacations as well as on several sabbaticals from Wesleyan.  He designed covers and  formats for self-published books that he produced together with his wife Barbara.  His interests extended to Indian literature and philosophy, and he  wrote and gave talks on the logic of Buddhism.  Together with Barbara, their website, The Lintons' Video Press, published twelve volumes of the Polish translation of the Sanskrit epic poem, the Mahabharata.



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