I just found out today that my favorite college professor, scholastic colleague, and friend; Dr. Richard Franke, passed away on September 1 of this year. He was 71. (I don't know why it took so long for me to hear about it.)
A paper that some of my classmates and I wrote in college with his help won a school-wide research colloquium and I later refined it, a year after graduation and for no reason other than the fact that he inspired me to be greater. We took it to the AAAS meeting (American Association for the Advancement of Science) in February of this year. It didn't win anything there, but I became a better statistician than almost everybody there in the process of writing the paper--even most of the judges were stumped. The original paper had been sitting on his desk on the top of one of his "I'm an engineer, so I keep EVERYTHING" piles for almost two years--he used it in his classes as an example of what makes a good research paper.
I had him twice in college, both were three-hour courses, but in our last year, when class ended at 9:00 PM, a few of my classmates and I stayed after until 11:30 PM sometimes just to discuss ENRON, energy solutions, and even battery technology for cars (he brought me on board with batteries and caused me to leave my Hydrogen power ideas behind).
On occasion, I used to drive him home from school if he walked but it was too late to walk home (he lived just up the road) .
He was unorthodox (really), a true genius, and the most stubborn man I have ever met. He also convinced me that the only degree really worth pursuing (for me) is a PhD (or several) which is why I am going to aim for that in my higher education in the next couple of years.
The last time I spoke to him was in late-February, but I wanted to get in touch with him again to make plans for AAAS in 2010.
He was a great man, the best professor Loyola College in MD had, and he will be missed. I only hope that I had just a fraction of the influence in his life as he had in mine.
