Henry Dan Piper ’39

Professor emeritus of English, biographer of F. Scott Fitzgerald '17, and former dean of liberal arts and sciences at Southern Illinois U.-Carbondale, Dan died July 25, 1999, at his home in Murphysboro, Ill., after a long illness.

His distinguished career always reflected the twin interests he revealed as an undergraduate. A chemistry major, his senior thesis earned a national prize for best undergraduate work on paint chemistry. Yet his spare time was devoted to writing for the Prince and the Nassau Lit. He started work with duPont and during WWII supervised a shift manufacturing TNT, then moved to the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb in Illinois and Hanford, Wash.

In 1946, he began graduate work at Princeton in English, then switched his career to teaching American literature both here and abroad, along the way holding many distinguished fellowships. He loved the southern Illinois country, and for the centennial of SIU in 1969, he and two colleagues created Land Between the Rivers, celebrating the people and the history of the region. It sold out in its first day of publication.

To his wife, Roberta Bicknell, and their two sons, Andrew and Jonathan '81, we offer our sincere sympathy.

The Class of 1939