With the death of Robert R. Korfhage on November 20, 1998, the field of information science lost a distinguished researcher and educator who worked with and influenced generations of graduates, many of whom now hold faculty positions at major institutions around the world. In May of 1998 Bob retired as Professor in the Department of Information Science and Telecommunications at the University of Pittsburgh. Though battling cancer, he continued to be professionally active, working with doctoral students, publishing, and attending conferences. Shortly before his death Bob was recognized by the ASIS community with an award for Information Science Book of the Year for his most recent publication, Information Storage and Retrieval, a work which also received the 1997 Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publications Award in the Computer Science Division.
Bob's degrees were in mathematics, with an undergraduate specialization in mathematical engineering, and these two disciplines provided him with a strong framework for his research. His work always had strong mathematical foundations but he was also very interested in the way things work, not only in the technical sense but also in terms of the social and cultural implications, a breadth of interest which brought him to an early realization of the potential for computer-based information retrieval in library and information science. Recollections of Bob's early influence in bringing these research communities together in the 70s are given below by Christine Borgman.
Bob served on university faculties for over 35 years, principally Purdue (1962Purdue ( -1970)), Southern Methodist University (1970University ( -1987)), and the University of Pittsburgh (1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998). Don Kraft describes some of these early influences. During this time his major research initiatives were in information retrieval and visual languages. He pursued these interests in parallel, remaining highly visible in both these research communities. He contributed a number of new ideas, including work on reference points as a mechanism for tailoring information retrieval systems to