Walter L. Baily Jr. *55

Walter Baily, professor of mathematics emeritus at the University of Chicago, died Jan. 15, 2013, at age 82.

He received a bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1952, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton in 1955. He was an instructor at MIT and Princeton before joining Chicago as an assistant professor in 1957, becoming a full professor in 1963. Baily co-authored the seminal concept known as the Baily-Borel Compactification. According to Chicago colleague Professor Niels Nygaard, this method is still important for studying representation theory and number theory.

Baily admired his Princeton Ph.D. adviser, Kunihiko Kodaira, and this led to a “deep love of Japanese culture and the Japanese language, which he spoke fluently,” said Nygaard. In the 1950s and 1960s, Baily often gave guest lectures in Japan. During one such trip he was introduced to his future wife, Yaeko Iseki, whom he married in 1963.

Baily retired in 2005. His son, Walter Toshihide Baily ’91, recalled: “My father always told me [of] the great times that he had at Princeton and how it was a great place for mathematics. It was through my father that I really fell in love with Princeton.”

Baily is survived by Yaeko, his son, and two grandchildren.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.