The McMaster Engineering community is saddened by the passing of Professor Emeritus Jeffery Zucker, a longtime member of the Department of Computing and Software whose career was dedicated to advancing the theoretical foundations of computer science.
Professor Zucker joined McMaster in 1989 after earning his PhD in Mathematics from Stanford University in 1971. Throughout his career, his research focused on generalized computability theory, program semantics and the logical foundations of software documentation. Even after becoming Professor Emeritus in 2017, Professor Zucker remained active in research and academic collaboration, continued to write papers and supervised graduate students and research associates.
“Jeff was a valued member of our department,” said Richard Paige, Chair of the Department of Computing and Software. “He was a brilliant mathematician, whose work on denotational semantics of concurrency is now rightly considered foundational. He was also a renaissance man with deep interests in baroque music – he played with the Dundas Valley Orchestra for some time – and had an encyclopedic knowledge of art and literature. I remember him putting that to excellent use when he supervised my Capstone project as an undergraduate, which involved authorship detection before the current interest in AI and machine learning started to dominate. I remember him saying afterwards, very kindly, that he didn’t think we would succeed in our project, but he was very pleased that we came very close!”
One of his last graduate students, Fateme Ghasemi, wrote these beautiful words: “When I first met Jeff, I expected to find a brilliant professor. What I didn’t expect was someone who could make me laugh almost every time we spoke. Jeff had a wonderful sense of humor and a way of finding something funny even in the middle of difficult situations. There was never a conversation with him that didn’t end with a smile. As my supervisor, he believed in me even when I wasn’t sure of myself. He showed me what it means to be generous with your time, your knowledge, and your kindness.”
“On behalf of the Faculty of Engineering, I extend my sincere condolences to Professor Zucker’s family, friends, former students and colleagues,” said Heather Sheardown, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. “Professor Zucker devoted his career to scholarship, discovery and graduate education, and we are grateful for his many years of service to McMaster.”
The Faculty of Engineering extends its deepest sympathies to Professor Zucker’s family and to all who had the privilege of working and learning alongside him.