<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"><b>Donald Moiseyevitch Solitar</b></font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Professor Donald Solitar, eminent mathematician,
occasional poet, and one of York University's originals, passed away unexpectedly
on Friday, April 25, 2008, at age 75.<br>
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He came to York in 1968 from the Polytechnic University of New York to
head the Mathematics department. He was also Acting Chair of the Computer
Science department during 1968-73. Through his efforts and those of his
close friend and collaborator, Abe Karrass, York's mathematics department
soon became a world centre in "combinatorial group theory" (the
study of groups---which in essence measure the symmetries of objects both
real and imaginary---in terms of generating symmetries and relations between
them). <br>
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Professor Solitar was a “lateral thinker”, very often coming up with
an unexpected viewpoint. He was well known in the international mathematical
community, in particular for the now classic book Combinatorial Group Theory,
written jointly with his adviser Wilhelm Magnus and with Abe Karrass. The
book was subsequently translated into Russian. In 1982 he was elected Fellow
of the Royal Society of Canada. </font>
<p><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Donald was an inspiring teacher, and
in 1985 received an OCUFA Teaching Award. He had an ebullient and in other
ways extraordinary personality, and was extremely generous to all he came
in contact with. <br>
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He is survived by his wife Francien, his sister Miriam, and a large extended
family, of which he was the patriarch. <br>
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<p><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Bob Burns, Israel Kleiner, Alfred Pietrowski</font>