University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. Nov. 21 in the Center for the Arts for Nobel laureate and UB faculty member emeritus Herbert Hauptman, who died on Oct. 23 at age 94.

Those attending the service are asked to RSVP.

Hauptman became Western New York’s most important scientist ever after he and colleague Jerome Karle received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985 for developing mathematical methods for deducing the molecular structure of chemical compounds.

Hauptman was president of Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, an emeritus professor in the UB Department of Structural Biology and adjunct professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

He also was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

A memorial service will be held at 5 p.m. Nov. 22 in Dietrich Funeral Home, 2480 Kensington Ave., Amherst, for Paul H. Reitan, UB professor emeritus of geology, who died Oct. 30 in his Amherst home. He was 83.

Born in Kanawha, Iowa, of Norwegian ancestry, Reitan graduated from the University of Chicago before earning his doctorate at the University of Oslo, where he conducted research supported by a Fulbright Fellowship.

A specialist in environmental science, Reitan taught at UB for 32 years, developing numerous geology courses designed to provide an appreciation for and understanding of the mutual interactions and interdependence of the physical environment and society. He also served as dean of the former Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics from 1976-79.

He was inducted into the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters in 1995, and in 2005 was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his contributions to educating the public about environmental sustainability science.

Reitan also was a fellow of the Geological and Mineralogical Societies of America; Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society; and the International Association of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry. He authored and presented hundreds of scholarly articles and papers over the course of his career.

After retiring from UB in 1998, Reitan continued to be active in the field, organizing several symposia over the past decade, including one on the culture of growth at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He also became a facilitator for the Alternatives to Violence Project, both leading and coordinating nonviolent conflict-resolution workshops for inmates at the Wende Correctional Facility.