On behalf of the Lange Family I would like to invite you to celebrate the life of Dr. Lester H. Lange, who passed on March 16th, 2010.  Below are the details concerning the celebration of his life.

Saturday, April 24, 2010
1:00pm-4:00pm
Moss Landing Marine Laboratories
http://www.lhl.myevent.com/

Please visit the website for directions, RSVP, and more.

There will be an opportunity to share memories, so please feel free to prepare something if you'd like.

Sincerely,
Arwen Lange
(Lester's Granddaughter)

Dear All,

It is with sadness that I relate the passing of Dr. Lester Lange.  Les Lange, of Capitola-by-the-Sea, California, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Emeritus Dean of  Science at San  Jose State University, died on Tuesday, March 16 at age 86. He and his beloved wife Beverly, who died in January 1998, had retired to Capitola in 1988. Throughout his retirement, he served the Director, faculty, and students of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, an administrative part of the SJSU College of Science. There he co-founded the Friends of MLML, a support corporation. Les and his wife Beverly were long time supporters of MLML and Les was the Dean early in the development of MLML's some 44 years ago and took great pride in watching MLML flourish into and internationally renowned marine science institution.  More recently Les and Bev also established the Archimedes Scholarship that benefits SJSU and MLML students in alternate years.  As a professor emeritus of mathematics, Les was always prone to mathematical elegance. An example appears as a stain glass rendition of a recent derivation of an elegant geometrical concept of  Archimedes and hangs in our entryway.

He was born on January 2, 1924 in Concordia, MO, to Harry William Christopher Lange and Ella Marie Lange (nee Alewel). After graduating from high school there, he was drafted into the U S Army, serving in the infantry from 1943-1946. He received three World War II battle stars in the European theatre, including the Battle of the Bulge, and the liberation of German concentration camps, earning the Combat Infantryman’s Badge and the Bronze Star.

His higher education began with an early year during the war at U C Berkeley and a 1948 mathematics AB at Valparaiso University, where he married Anne Marie Pelikan in 1947. They had four sons: Christopher, Nicholas, Philip, and Alexander. They were divorced in 1960 and he raised the sons in San Jose, California, where he joined the mathematics  faculty of San Jose State University. In 1962, he married Beverly Jane Brown, a chemist from Stanford, who adopted his four sons. A son, Andrew, was born to them in 1964.

Les received his mathematics PhD at Notre Dame in 1960 and, earlier, both Bev and Les had received MS degrees at Stanford in 1950, though they did not know each other at the time. Because they so highly prized higher education, they endowed the Archimedes Scholarship at SJSU. The awarding of these scholarships began in 2003 with the awarding of two $2000 scholarships in the College of Science at SJSU, one to an on campus student and one to a student at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.

Though he was not primarily a research mathematician, he wrote many papers, including two expository papers which won national prizes, the Polya Award and the L. R. Ford Sr. Award from the Mathematical Association of America (the MAA). He was active in a number of mathematical organizations in various capacities as an officer and editor at California, regional, and national levels.  These included the MAA, the London Mathematical Society, the Fibonacci Association, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges, the California Mathematics Council, and the Santa Clara Valley Mathematical Association. He was a co-founder of the international Fibonacci Quarterly.

At the January 2003 national meeting of the MAA in Baltimore, its Board of Governors presented Les with its Certificate of Meritorious Service, “ honoring his many contributions to the MAA and to the mathematical community at large.  He spent essentially his entire career at San Jose State University, first as a faculty member from 1960 on, as department head between 1961 and 1970, and Dean of the School of Science between 1970 and 1988. In both of these latter assignments he was widely viewed as enormously successful in forming effective and cohesive academic units. … He has received various honors—both Danforth and NSF faculty fellowships—and he is (an elected) Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.  He is the author of a popular text in linear algebra. At least five of his papers have become parts of anthologies in algebra, geometry, applied mathematics, calculus, and linear algebra.  … For the many years of loyal service to the MAA…we are proud to award the Certificate of Meritorious Service to Dean Lester H. Lange.”

Les recently wrote: I have nicely passed the three score and ten years normally allotted by the psalmist. When I do fall off the twig, it is my hope to be remembered as a good teacher and leader, a man who, to the best of his lights, worked diligently at being a good husband and a good father and a good grandfather to some truly exceptional people.

In dedication of the Archimedes Scholarship, Les and Bev noted that they were themselves grateful examples of the fact that “None of us become educated without the help of others”.  They have been both recipients and practitioners of this ethic, that continues to serve us at MLML.  Les will be missed.

The family is planning memorial arrangements at this time. I will let you know as they evolve.

In memory of Les and Beverly, contributions to the Archimedes Scholarship Fund via the Friends of MLML are always welcome.

Dr. Lester H. Lange, 1924-2010

Kenneth Coale, Director

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories