Dr. Robert R. Korfhage, School of Information Sciences Professor Emeritus, died at his home in Squirrel Hill on November 20, 1998. He retired from the University of Pittsburgh in May, 1998 after a long and distinguished research career in the area of Information Retrieval and related topics. Holding bachelors, masters, and PhD degrees in mathematics from the University of Michigan, he has spent more than 35 years on university faculties including Purdue (1962-70), Southern Methodist University (1970-87), and Pitt (1987-98).

While serving on those faculties he also served as a visiting professor at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and the Universities of Western Ontario, Alberta, and Texas at Dallas and Williams College. Selected as a Fulbright-Hays Lecturer twice, Dr. Korfhage also traveled professionally in Europe, Morocco, Japan, and China. His connections with international scholars developed into a fruitful relationship for the School of Information Sciences and Molde College and Hedmark College in Norway. The agreement has enabled the universities to exchange faculty and students on a regular basis.

Among his fields of interest were: information storage and retrieval, full text and image databases, natural language systems, visual languages, human-computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, data structures, chromatic polynomials, hypergraphs, information networks, sparse matrices, and computer-assisted instruction. His most recent research activities were supported by the Information, Robotics, and Intelligent Systems section of the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Korhage authored 10 books, including his most recent publication Information Storage and Retrieval which received both the prestigious 1997 Association of American Publishers award for outstanding professional, reference or scholarly textbooks in the category for outstanding computer science textbooks and the 1998 American Society of Information Science award for the best information science book. He authored or co-authored more than 70 published papers. Through his research, he has helped to clarify fundamental issues surrounding the nature of document spaces and user information needs.

He held memberships, and was active in Sigma Xi, Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computer Society, and the American Society for Information Science, and he was a consultant to more than a dozen organizations.

The academic and professional career of Bob Korfhage is one that few can emulate. His research, scholarship, and devotion to students were inimitable. SIS Dean Toni Carbo said, "He was an extraordinary teacher and mentor to students and junior faculty." Stephen Hirtle, Department of Information Science and Telecommunications Chair added, "Dr. Korfhage was a strong mentor and his office constantly had a line of students, whom he would engage for hours in intellectual discussions. He guided the department for many years with this academic rigor, belief in doing what is right, and a wonderful sense of humor. He will be missed by all in the department and school."

Earlier this year the School established the Robert R. Korfhage Award for Excellence in "Information Retrieval." This award will be made in recognition of Dr. Korfhage's outstanding scholarship, excellent teaching, and dedicated service to the School of Information Sciences and the University of Pittsburgh. The award was established to encourage collaborative research between faculty and students, as exemplified by Dr. Korfhage's work. An award of $500 will be given annually to the best scholarly paper on information retrieval or a related topic, co-authored by at least one student and no more than one faculty member and worthy of publication in a refereed journal. The faculty has asked that memorial contributions be made to support this award.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Obituary
Memorial Service Celebrating The life of Robert Roy Korfhage
In Memoriam: Remarks by Toni Carbo
In Memoriam: Remarks by Anthony Debons
In Memoriam: Remarks by Blanche Woolls
Robert R. Korfhage, A Personal Remembrance from the 1970s, by Christine Borgman
Pictures of Robert Korfhage's grandson