Joseph M. Barone Jr. ’61 *68
Joe died Sept. 20, 2018, having struggled with Parkinson’s disease since 2014. Born in Newark, N.J., he came to Princeton from Nutley High School. At Princeton he majored in Italian in the Romance languages department, took his meals at Terrace Club, and won the William Koren Memorial Prize in Italian. His senior-year roommates were Len Berton and Myron Uman.
Joe earned three degrees at Princeton, culminating in a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1968, after which he taught at Rutgers and Guelph universities for several years. Having become a forerunner in computational linguistics, he then joined Bell Laboratories, where he designed computer-to-computer communications protocols that remain in use today. After retirement he continued to work in “fuzzy logic,” presenting papers internationally and serving as president of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society. He was a true scholar, approaching each new interest by spending hours in the library researching it. He was known for his kindness, selflessness, and high ethical standards. He influenced many young people during his career by being a role model for them.
He is survived by his wife of 42 years, Carol Broll; children Joseph, Catherine, and Bruno; and six grandchildren.
Paw in print
July 2025
On the cover: Wilton Virgo ’00 and his classmates celebrate during the P-rade.
1 Response
Comments
Lucy R. P. Short k'61
5 Years AgoThank You
Princeton Alumni Weekly:
I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to honor my grandfather and recognize him for his accomplishments. I know it may seem odd, but sometimes when I'm feeling a bit down and really missing him, I'll Google his full name. The first couple times I did it, very few results came up and that made me feel a range of emotions from angry/sad -- because he wasn't getting the recognition he deserved -- to relieved, because I got to keep him to myself. However, today, while sitting in an uncomfortably quiet room, I decided to take another look and almost jumped out of my skin when I saw your article. While reading it, my eyes watered and I nearly let a tear fall, but quickly stopped myself before crying at school. I would feel rude if I didn't at least try to thank you for writing this article, so here is my best attempt. I'm sorry if my grammar or spelling is not the best it should be, but I wanted to try to express my feelings to you in the best way I could. I will be showing the article to my family later so that they may feel the same pride that I did while reading it, and I hope you know that my mother will surely be brought to tears simply by thinking of what an amazing man he was. I know I've probably said it plenty throughout this lengthy response, but thank you.
Sincerely,