Obituaries

James D. Burke, whose work as a Cornell professor of animal science improved dairy herd management and who helped establish systematic herd-testing procedures in New York state, died Jan. 23 in Port Orange, Fla. He was 96.

Burke was born in Beech Creek, Pa., in 1907. Growing up on a farm as a child led him to career in animal science at Cornell. Before enrolling in college, he received a teaching certificate from Loch Haven Teachers College in 1927 and taught elementary school in Liberty Township, Pa. He returned to college and earned a bachelor's degree from Pennsylvania State College, now Pennsylvania State University, in 1932.

After working in the dairy industry, Burke joined the Cornell faculty as an instructor in 1936. He received his master's degree from Cornell in 1946 and concurrently became an assistant professor. Burke was promoted to associate professor in 1948 and professor in 1957. He became an emeritus professor in 1971.

Between 1936 and 1971, Burke was a dairy management extension specialist in the Department of Animal Science. In 1949 he led a group of Cornell extension agents and New York state dairy farmers in organizing the New York Dairy Herd Improvement Cooperative and establishing central laboratories for milk testing and recording.

In 1964, he received the Epsilon Sigma Phi award, and in 1967, he received an appreciation award from the New York Dairy Herd Improvement Cooperative and the DeLaval Award for Dairy Extension from the American Dairy Science Association. He served on the dairy records committee of the American Dairy Science Association for more than a decade and held all the offices in the extension section of that association. He also was a member of the American Society of Animal Science, Phi Kappa Phi, Gamma Sigma Delta and Epsilon Sigma Phi.

Burke remained actively engaged in the affairs of the Department of Animal Science through regular meetings of the emeritus faculty group and frequent attendance at departmental social gatherings. Most recently he participated in the department's centennial celebration this past November.

He married Velma Dillen in 1932, with whom he had eight children. She predeceased him. Burke then married Helen Meek, with whom he spent his last 15 years.

In addition to his wife, Helen, he is survived by his children Barbara Brown, Michael Burke, Nancy Drane, Betty Chupp, Sharon Wright, Timothy Burke and Tom Burke; stepdaughter Sandra True; grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. His daughter Susan Howser predeceased him.

A memorial service in his honor will be held in Ithaca in June.

José F. (Chepe) Escobar, professor of mathematics, died as a result of cancer Jan. 3 while on sabbatical leave in Colombia. He was 49.

Escobar was a world-renowned expert in the field of differential geometry, the study of geometric problems using methods of differential equations.

He was born in Manizales, Colombia, in 1954 and was educated in Colombia, Brazil and the United States, obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley in 1986.

In his doctoral thesis, Escobar solved an important problem, the boundary Yamabe problem, showing how to give a natural structure to all possible geometric realizations of manifolds with boundary (the higher dimensional analog of surfaces in space bounded by curves). The problem previously had been solved for manifolds without boundary (the analog of spheres, or the surface of a donut), but the presence of a boundary required many new ideas and led to a great flowering of research by mathematicians around the world. Escobar contributed more than 30 papers and books in this and related areas of mathematics.

He joined the Cornell faculty in July 1994. Previously he had taught at Indiana University, the University of Chicago and Courant Institute of New York University. He also was a visiting professor at Instituto de Matemáticas Puras y Aplicadas in Rio de Janeiro, Warwick University in England, the Mittag Leffler Institute in Djursholm, Sweden, and the Institût des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France. Among his numerous academic honors and awards were an Alfred P. Sloan Dissertation Fellowship (1985-86) and a Presidential Faculty Fellowship in pure mathematics (1992-97).

At Cornell, Escobar was a thesis adviser to many graduate students and a mentor to several postdoctoral associates. He also was deeply involved in encouraging mathematical development in South American countries and in helping the Cornell mathematics department recruit many Latin American graduate students.

As a young man, he was a competitive diver and became the national champion of Colombia. He also was an avid soccer player and salsa dancer.

He had his first bout with cancer while he was in graduate school, and despite a pessimistic diagnosis from his doctors, he made a total recovery. His colleagues note that this experience helped shape his personality, making him a man of great strength, compassion and optimism.

A memorial service will be held Monday, Feb. 16, at 4 p.m. in Anabel Taylor Hall.

Robert S. Smith, the William I. Myers Professor of Agricultural Finance emeritus and the former chair of the Tompkins County Trust Co., died at home in Ithaca, Jan. 25. He was 83.

Born in Laconia, N.H., in 1920, Smith graduated from Laconia High School in 1938. He earned a bachelor's degree at Cornell in 1942, and following graduation he served as a county extension agent in New York and New Hampshire. His career was interrupted by World War II, in which he served as a field artillery officer in the U.S. Army. After the war, Smith earned a master's degree (1950) and a doctorate (1952) at Cornell.

Smith joined the Cornell faculty in 1954 as an associate professor of farm management in the Department of Agricultural Economics. He became a full professor in 1958 and specialized in farm credit management and farm family financial planning.

In 1960-61, Smith served as adviser to the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture and the Israeli Agricultural Extension Service on farm management. In 1968 he spent six months advising the Agricultural Development Fund of Iran, a lending institution.

From 1960 to 1976, he served as director of the Bankers School of Agriculture held on the Cornell campus each summer, and he served as consultant for banks of the Farm Credit System.

Following his retirement from Cornell in 1980, he was board chair of the Tompkins County Trust Co. and a board member or consultant to numerous organizations, including serving as the agricultural specialist on the board of Mutual of New York Inc. In Ithaca, he served as a board member of Hospicare and Challenge Industries.

In 1994, Tompkins County Trust Co. established the Robert S. Smith Award for community progress and innovation to generate program partnerships between Cornell and Tompkins County. The bank endowed the award with $100,000.

Smith and his wife, Mary Morgan Smith, recently endowed the Morgan-Smith Trail at Cornell Plantations, because of their dedication to the university and love for the woods and nature.

In addition to his wife, Smith is survived by his children, Patricia Ley of Providence, R.I.; Peggy Rochette of Reston, Va.; M. Scott Smith of Lexington, Ky.; Sharon Purdy of Edgartown, Mass.; and Starlee Smith of Georgetown, Ky.; nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He has two surviving sisters, Jessie Naylor of Gilford, N.H., and Anne Dowling of Guilderland, N.Y. Seven siblings have predeceased him.

Funeral services were held Jan. 29 at the First Presbyterian Church in Ithaca. Memorial donations can be sent to Hospicare of Ithaca or Cornell Plantations.