Professor emeritus of civil engineering and architecture ROBERT MARK died March 29 in New York City. He was 88. Mark joined the faculty in 1968 and retired in 1996. He founded the Program in Architecture and Engineering, and served as its chair from 1981 to 1990. He also joined with Professor David Billington ’50 to found and direct the Program in Humanistic Studies in Engineering.
Mark’s research influenced the discipline of architectural history and the field of building conservation, and he pioneered the application of modern engineering modeling to the study of medieval and ancient buildings. Among his published works is a 1984 Scientific American analysis that he co-authored of the cathedral of Notre-Dame and its architectural influence (http://bit.ly/gothic-structure).
CHARLES GORDON GROSS, professor emeritus of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, died April 13 in Oakland, Calif. He was 83. Gross joined the faculty in 1970 and retired in 2013. His work was foundational to the field of cognitive neuroscience — he revolutionized the understanding of sensory processing and pattern recognition with his studies of the primate visual system. He discovered brain cells that are especially sensitive to perceiving faces and hands, leading to a new field of research. In 2009 Gross married Joyce Carol Oates, who taught creative writing at Princeton until 2014.