In Memoriam and Obituaries, Summer 2022

In Memoriam

Listing includes notices shared with the university between Sept. 16, 2021 through Jan. 15, 2022.

Obituaries

Faculty/Staff

Adil Godrej, research associate professor of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering, died April 10. Godrej’s affiliation began in 1980 as a graduate student, and he most recently served as co-director of the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory in Manassas, Virginia.

Larry Neil Killough, professor emeritus, died Jan. 19. Killough taught accounting at Virginia Tech for 45 years. His research expertise and primary teaching areas were cost and managerial accounting. Killough co-authored eight books and more than 60 academic and practitioner journal articles. In addition, he had numerous conference proceedings published and spoke at over 30 professional meetings.

Peter Linnell, a mathematics professor, died in February. He joined Virginia Tech in 1983 and held concurrent positions at multiple universities, including serving as a Humboldt fellow at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Stuttgart and the Institute for Experimental Mathematics at Essen University. His research focused on problems in algebra that use analysis and topology. He also studied the so-called zero divisor conjecture, a mathematical theory that remains unsolved after 80 years.

Jerald Francis "Jerry" Robinson Sr., who served 37 years in the Pamplin College of Business, died April 19. During his time at Virginia Tech, Robinsons received teaching awards at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He was president of the Faculty Senate for two terms and chaired the committee to plan the curriculum at the Steger Center in Switzerland where he taught for 13 full sessions.

Virginia Tech Professor Emeritus Dale Duane Wolf died April 22. Wolf joined the Virginia Tech faculty in January 1967. His research and Virginia Cooperative Extension work emphasized forage crop management and physiology, biofuels production, as well as methods and instrumentation for measuring basic growth factors such as photosynthesis of intact plants and individual leaves attached to the plant using small portable chambers.