| Notes |
- Daily News-Miner
November 14, 2017
Tom Head died Friday, Nov. 10, 2017.
He was predeceased by his parents, Joe and Venus Head, and by his sister, Betty Jo Rayl Bryant.
He is survived by his wife, Eileen Fay; his daughters, Tawn and Hadassah; his sons, Alan and Michael; and his four grandchildren, Austin, Daemon, Luon and Prishtina. He was predeceased by Tawn's son, Chris.
He had the extreme good fortune that his children chose wonderful spouses: Shawn Wood, Shprese Dimiri and Jeffrey Mativetski.
Tom held professorships at Iowa State University, University of Alaska and Binghamton University.
He is survived by his seven doctoral students, each of whom he was very proud: E. Rutter, J. Delaney, J. Harrison, N. Jonoska, A. Weinberger, E. Goode and J. Loftus.
His life was brightened immensely by visits for lecturing as a guest in several nations; the longest visits being in the Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Malaysia.
All his training was in pure mathematics (University of Oklahoma and University of Kansas), but his recognition was for the development of interactions between molecular biology and formal language theory.
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."
In 2008, a conference was held, celebrating his 75th birthday.
Listening to the recorded music of Beethoven, Mahler and Schoenberg, and enjoying his family members kept him here on Earth through age 83.
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1934 - 2017 (83 years)
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