American mathematician, author and educator David A. Klarner was born October 10, 1940, in Fort Bragg, California, and spent his childhood in Napa. He knew he wanted to be a mathematician in grade school and attended Humboldt State College as an undergraduate. He obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He was then a post-doctoral fellow at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario; the Technological University in Eindhoven, The Netherlands; University of Reading, Reading, England; and a visiting professor of computer science at Stanford University. He was a professor at the State University of New York, Binghampton, and a visiting professor at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario. He was distinguished visiting professor at Humboldt State College in 1979-1980 and spent sabbatical research years in The Netherlands in 1980-81 and 1991-92 and presented a lecture series at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. He finished his career at the University of Nebraska, at Lincoln, where he was a professor of computer science for 15 years. He retired in 1996 to Eureka, California, where he died on March 20, 1999, of complications from diabetes. Dr. Klarner had a strong interest in discrete and recreational mathematics. He published a seminal article on polyominoes in the Journal of Combinatorial Theory in 1969 and continued to make important and original contributions to the literature of combinatorial enumeration, polyominoes and box-packing. He won many awards and fellowships and was published widely in various mathematical journals and books throughout his distinguished career. He was a good friend and frequent correspondent of Martin Gardner and edited The Mathematical Gardner containing contributions from many of the best mathematics popularizers of the last several decades of the twentieth century. Dr. Klarner was a member of the American Mathematical Society, Mathematical Association of America, Fibonacci Association and the Association of Computing Machinery.
Lady Ouida Touche was a former Fleet street journalist turned art consultant. Moving to Calgary in 1961 she started her own business as an art consultant for companies building art collections. She started the annual Calgary Art Walk, served as chairwoman of the Calgary Region Arts Foundation, sponsored Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, and gave a weekly arts talk on CBC Radio. Ouida married Rodney, a fellow Fleet Street reporter, in 1955. She died in 2009.
Margaret J. Osler was born on November 27 1942. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in 1963 and later graduated from Indiana University with her Master of Arts (1966) and Ph.D. (1968) with degrees in History and the Philosophy of Science. Her dissertation was "John Locke and Some Philosophical Problems in the Science of Boyle and Newton.
Osler held teaching appointments at Oregon State University, Harvey Mudd College and Wake Forest University; she moved to Calgary in 1975 with a position in the Department of History. During her tenure she was instrumental in the creation of the major and minor undergraduate programs in History and Philosophy of Science, the interdisciplinary M.A and Ph.D. programs and the Research Institute in Gender Studies. She published widely in the areas of history of science and religion, intellectual history, mechanical philosophy and the scientific revolution.
Osler was the recipient of the Science and Religion Course Prize from the Centre for Theology and the Natural Sciences, the Richard S. Westfall Lecture from Indiana University and the Stillman Drake Lecture from the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, of which she was President from 1987-1990. She was also active as the editor of several journals including the Journal of the History of Philosophy, and she served in many community organizations including the Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association and the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership.
Osler died in Calgary on September 15, 2010.