Theodore Enns

Theodore Christian Enns ,75, died September 4, 2021 of pancreatic cancer at home in La Jolla in the presence of his family. Chris moved from the East Coast to San Diego where he graduated from La Jolla High School. After majoring in mathematics and graduating from the University of California at Riverside, he began teaching mathematics at San Diego State University and San Diego Mesa College. He continued to teach at Mesa College while obtaining his Ph. D. at the University of California at San Diego. At Mesa, he taught virtually every course in mathematics that the college had to offer. He designed a method for teaching courses through a cell phone during the pandemic to facilitate participation by his many students who lacked access to computers. His teaching particularly emphasized real-life applications of mathematics as a way of engaging his students. He taught at Mesa until Spring of 2021 when he became too weak to continue. His participation as a regular reviewer for Mathematical Reviews, published by the American Mathematical Society, continued until a month prior to his death. Chris had a wide range of passions, which, in addition to math and teaching, included anthropology, archeology, and sports, especially weight lifting. His extracurricular accomplishments included authorship at the age of eight of a book on the life of a Neanderthal family, and beforehand, creation of Baltimore's first snow Stegosaurus. In addition to any aspect of sports, he was particularly prone to extended discourses on the finer points of cars and their mechanics. His intelligence, sense of humor and gentleness impacted all who knew him. He was preceded in death by his father, Theodore Enns, and his mother, Lorraine Haege Enns. He is survived by his sister, Caroline Alice Enns, her husband, Stephen B. Hall, his brother, Frederick Enns, Frederick's wife, Marcia Liberati Enns, and their two children, Theodore Thomas Enns and James Alexander Enns.