In Memory of Moez Alimohamed

A year after his son's death, the father of Moez Alimohamed writes to President Judith Rodin, and, with her permission, shares his letter with the campus community. Further below, Moez's graduate group chairman adds his appreciation.


Dear President Rodin:

On this sad anniversary of the passing of our beloved Moez, I should like, on behalf of the family, to convey the following:

a) our gratitude to all the friends of Moez at the University of Pennsylvania (faculty, staff, students, et al) who sent flowers and messages of condolences with which we were all much touched, but could not respond to/acknowledge individually.

b) our appreciation for all that the University of Pennsylvania staff and the faculty have done to deal with various matters relating to Moez's personal effects, finances, etc.

The Memorial Service on October 26, 1994, afforded me and our son, Farouk, the opportunity to meet with many of Moez's friends and well- wishers--both the Service and the individual meetings were a source of much comfort to us in our bereavement.

We have learnt with pleasure that, thanks to generous contributions to the Moez Alimohamed Memorial Fund, the Graduate Student Award for Distinguished Teaching in Mathematics can now be endowed--our congratulations to Scott Pauls as the first recipient. We are also delighted that the Moez Alimohamed Graduate Student Reference Library will be dedicated in the first semester of the new school year.

It is indeed comforting to know that Moez's legacy--his inquisitive spirit, teaching excellence and keen intellect--will always be an important part of the Penn community and an inspiration to all.

As ever,

Iqbal Alimohamed


Some Ways Moez Is Remembered at Penn

It is with great sadness that the Penn community observed the first anniversary of Moez Alimohamed's death. Moez, a graduate student in the Mathematics Department, was robbed and killed on August 29, 1994 near his apartment in Philadelphia.

The Department of Mathematics has established a Memorial Fund in his honor in order to support the Moez Alimohamed Graduate Student Award for Distinguished Teaching in Mathematics and the Moez Alimohamed Graduate Student Reference Library. Thanks to the generous contributions from the Penn community and from Moez's friends all over the world we have been able to collect over $20,000 towards the Memorial Fund.

This has enabled us to permanently endow the Teaching Award which will be given annually to a graduate student in the Mathematics Department who displays the outstanding commitment to teaching for which Moez was so well known. The first recipient of this prize was Scott Pauls who was presented with the Teaching Award on April 19, 1995.

We are currently in the process of establishing the Moez Alimohamed Graduate Student Reference Library which will be located in the graduate lounge of the Mathematics Department and which will be dedicated later this semester. The library will be stocked, initially, with donated books, including a large selection of Moez's own reference books donated by the Alimohamed family. We intend to buy further books annually for the Reference Library from proceeds of the Memorial Fund.

We are encouraging further financial contributions to the Memorial Fund in order to permanently endow the Reference Library as well. Checks should be made out to the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania and sent to Professor Wolfgang Ziller, Graduate Group Chairman, Department of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. All donations are tax deductible in the U.S. and Canada.

We would like to thank everybody for their generous contributions to the Moez Alimohamed Memorial Fund. These are greatly appreciated and will help us keep alive the memory of Moez, the warm special person he was, and his commitment to excellence in teaching and research. In tribute to the quality and promise of his work, the University posthumously awarded a Ph.D. degree to Moez in December 1994. His research paper, entitled "A characterization of lambda definability in categorical models of implicit polymorphism" has become a standard reference and was published recently in "Theoretical Computer Science" (Volume 146, 1995), the preeminent journal of this subject in the world.

-- Wolfgang Ziller,

Graduate Group Chairman, Mathematics