ROBERT PEEL FUTRELLE

FUTRELLE, Robert Peel Formerly of Newton, MA, passed away February 24, 2021 in Hastings on Hudson, NY. Dr. Futrelle was born in 1937 in Washington, D.C. to Josephine (Collins) and Jacques Futrelle, Jr. He attended MIT in Cambridge, MA, earning an SB in 1959 and a Ph.D in Physics in 1966. In 1962 he married Carolyn Elizabeth Scott and together they moved to Thousand Oaks, CA where Dr. Futrelle, known as Bob, worked as a research physicist for Rockwell International. In 1971, he was a visiting fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado and the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, CO. From 1972-1975 he was an NIH special research fellow in the Department of Theoretical Biology at the University of Chicago. He then spent ten years as an assistant professor in the Department of Genetics and Development at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 1986 until his retirement in 2011, he was an associate professor and the founder and head of the Biological Knowledge Laboratory in the College of Computer & Information Science at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Bob was an innovative researcher in several fields, especially in his application of computers and informatics to biology. His forward-looking achievements included early work on digital speech synthesis, digital image processing, graphical user interfaces, and biological simulation. His later work focused on artificial intelligence, including language understanding and the automated interpretation of diagrams. He was a founding chair of the Gordon Conference on Atomic & Molecular Interactions and a member of the corporation of the Marine Biological Laboratory. He belonged to numerous professional associations, including Sigma Xi, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Bob had an insatiable curiosity and made it his life's work to understand the world holistically through the lens of science. He was a gifted teacher with an infectious enthusiasm for any subject. His playful sense of humor and boundless intellectual energy made him an unforgettable personality. A devoted husband, father and grandfather, he instilled a love of learning and creative exploration in his family. Bob was preceded in death by his wife Carolyn, half-brother Stanley W. Boyd and brother Jacques Futrelle, III. He is survived by his children David S. Futrelle of Chicago, IL, Joseph M. Futrelle of Falmouth, MA, and Genevieve Z. Futrelle of Hastings on Hudson, NY; and two grandchildren. An in-person Memorial Service will be planned at a later date.

View the online memorial for Robert Peel FUTRELLE