Vera Pless

I met Vera for the first time at an ISIT in San Diego. During my visit at the University of Illinois Chicago she inspired my work on an open problem of self-dual codes of length 56. She was very supportive to me. I saw her for the last time at the conference in Cincinnati in 2006.
Rest in peace, Vera.

Vera's early work on self-dual codes that support 5-designs inspired my interest in
the interactions between codes and combinatorial designs. I met Vera in person for first time at the International Symposium on Information Theory in Ann Arbor in October 1986, where I presented results from our first joint work with Vera on self-dual codes over GF(7), which we completed by communicating remotely via ordinary mail.
We continued our collaboration with Vera during my visit of the...

I met Vera originally through her excellent Coding Theory book, which I used for many years as a textbook for my seniors and master's students. Her more advanced book (with Huffman) is to this day my go-to textbook for the doctoral student version of my coding theory offerings at Ohio University.

I finally met Vera in person in the late 80's when she was one of the keynote speakers we invited for an international Conference of Algebra and its Applications. After that, I saw her often...

I am saddened by the news. I was a PhD student of Vera at UIC from 1988 to 1990. I will always remember Vera for her kindness towards me when I was her student and her help and encouragement for me later in my career.

Xiang-dong Hou
PhD student of 1990.

After graduate school in Delaware, I worked as Vera's postdoc at UIC for 2 years starting in 2001. She was a profound influence on me - a brilliant mathematician, and with a keen interest in educating the next generation. I am lucky to have worked with her for those two years in Chicago. May she rest in peace knowing all of the lives and careers she influenced.

I met Vera Pless first time at ISIT'97 in Ulm (Germany), where she impressed me right away with her uncomplicated and direct approach to all sort of things.

For me, she was a human factor in this ambition driven business, and this is something that I will never forget.

To my understanding, she was well aware of what we call the mainstream nowadays, but she never felt tempted nor was she in need to follow ephemeral trends. This is, what she is standing for, in my memories....