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Leon McCulloh
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Leon McCulloh Obituary
URBANA - Leon McCulloh of Urbana died Friday (Oct. 31, 2025) at Carle Foundation Hospital, Urbana. Funeral arrangements were incomplete at Renner-Wikoff Chapel and Crematory, 1900 S. Philo Road, Urbana.
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for Leon McCulloh
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Rodney McCulloh
November 2, 2025
Leon was the son of Ezra McCulloh and Ruth Stoner and the brother of William McCulloh of Gambier, Ohio. He was born Dec 29, 1933 in McPherson, Kansas and grew up in Worthington, Ohio.
In 1951 the Worthington High School newspaper announced that Leon and his co-valedictorian were recognized as "two fellows most likely to succeed in the class of `51 if intelligence and personality are any sign." Leon maintained a four point grade average in school in addition to being one of the most popular boys in the class. It was reported that Leon "played the piano well" and was president of Hi-Y during his senior year. (Hi-Y stood for High School YMCA, an organization his father had been heavily involved with in the 1930s thru 1950s.) Leon also earned his football and track letters. He spoke at the commencement exercises and received the Charles Jefferson award
Leon earned his B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan in 1955. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for the 1955-56 academic year and spent the year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. (A Fulbright year is spent abroad as a U.S. government-sponsored cultural ambassador, typically for graduate study, research, or teaching English. It is a prestigious academic exchange program designed to foster mutual understanding between people of the U.S. and other countries. Candidates were competitively selected based on academic achievement, a compelling proposal, leadership potential, and the ability to adapt to the host community.) In 1959 he earned a Ph.D. from Ohio State University. His dissertation was Integral Bases in Kummer Extensions of Dedekind Fields.
In August of 1961 Leon and Judith Marie Binkele of Peoria, Illinois were married. Judy was a graduate of Peoria Central High School in Peoria, Illinois, and Cottey College in Nevada, Misouri. She received her BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and MA in English from the Ohio State University. While at Ohio State, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to study Indo-European philology at the University of Brussels. At the time of their marriage she was working toward a doctorate in folklore at Indiana University, where she was employed in the Archives of Folk and Primitive Music. (Judith went on the have a very distinguished career which is well summarized on a Wikipedia page under her name.) At the time of their marriage Leon was working as an instructor at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Judy and Leon were married for 52 years at the time of Judy´s death on July 13, 2014.
After her death Leon provided a generous gift to help launch the Judith McCulloh Endwoment for American Music which helped ensure that the series Music in American Life (launched by Judy in 1972) would continue to thrive into the future, documenting American music in all its richness and diversity.
In 1961 Leon became an instructor in Mathematics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and by 1982 he had been promoted to full professor. His areas of interest were Algebraic number theory, relative Galois module structure of rings of integers, class groups of integral group rings, Stickelberger relations. He retired in 2002 and was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus of Mathematics.
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