NASA teams with University students Nathan Bayless, junior mechanical engineering student in the University's Dual Degree program, works with a Compton-Drew Middle School student at the St. Louis Science Center. Bayless was one of seven School of Engineering and Applied Science students who worked with middle school children on an interactive Web site that taught them about electricity and magnetism. The University students were involved in a NASA video featuring the middle school students. The video, "Patterns, Functions and Algebra: Wired for Space," is part of a NASA series, NASA CONNECT, free instructional TV programs delivered to classrooms via satellite. NASCAR racing champion Jeff Gordon made a guest appearance on the program, demonstrating how important math, science and engineering is to racing. The film was shown March 2 to students at Compton-Drew Middle School.

Nobel Prize winner to give Witherspoon Lecture

Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg will present "Science and/or Religion," the inaugural Witherspoon Lecture in Religion and Science, at 11 a.m. March 23 in Graham Chapel.

Weinberg is the Josey Regental Chair of Science and professor in the physics and astronomy departments the University of Texas, Austin. His research has spanned a broad range of topics in quantum field theory, elemental particle physics and cosmology.

Weinberg was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics and the 1991 National Medal of Science.

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Obituaries

Margaret J. Sigelnski, 62

Department secretary in residential life, died Sunday, Feb. 4, 2001, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital after complications from a blood clot. She was 62.

Sigelnski had worked for the University for 17 years.

She is survived by her husband, William J. Sigelnski; four sons, Robert Leporin of St. Louis, Steven Leporin of Texas, Dennis Leporin of Cahokia, Ill., and Michael Leporin of House Springs, Mo.; daughter, Denise Wanser of Florida; mother, Josephine R. Brandt of East Alton, Ill.; brother, John Brandt of Wood River, Ill., five sisters, Josephine Nagele of Theodosia, Mo., Joan Walton of Cottage Hills, Ill., June Brandt of East Alton, Ill., Joyce Livingston of Piedmont, Mo., and Jenny Tumbus of St. Louis; and 19 grandchildren.

Funeral services were held Feb. 6 at Braun Colonial Funeral Home in Cahokia.

Raymond W. Gerfen, former medical research technologist in neurology and neurosurgery at the School of Medicine, died Saturday, Feb. 24, 2001, after being struck by lightning at his farm in St. Clair County. He was 33.

Enrique Higa, M.D., former associate professor of pathology at the School of Medicine, died Monday, Feb. 19, 2001, of cancer at his home in Chesterfield, Mo. He was 61.

Of note

Washington University has received a National Institutes of Health grant to support summer undergraduate research fellowships for 10 students majoring in engineering, math, physics or other physical sciences.

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