Stuart A. Mayper (1916-1997).

The discipline of general-semantics has suffered a grievous loss, as has the multitude of friends and colleagues of Stuart Mayper. Stuart died on November 25, 1997, succumbing to cancer of the bladder, kidney failure, and other organ tissue breakdowns. He was a leader among the handful of rigorous korzybskian general-semanticists working in the last three decades. His contributions as writer, editor, teacher and Institute of General Semantics Trustee have been enormous. I predict that they will prove of long-lasting time-binding value.

Stuart ("Enzo," as I called him) joined the Institute's seminar-workshop staff in 1977. In the seminars, he gave a series of lectures tracing the evolution and development of scientific paradigms from Aristotle through Kopernik (Copernicus), Galileo, Descartes and Newton to Einstein, with references to many others along the way. Since Science and Sanity, i.e., general-semantics, is based on scientific epistemology, methodology and attitude, the Institute considers the material that Stuart covered essential to the development of an informed and rigorous general-semanticist. Korzybski, I aver, would have loved Stuart's presentations.

In 1985, after long urgings, I appointed Stuart editor of the General Semantics Bulletin. That event marks the high point of my contributions as Director of the Institute of General Semantics. Stuart produced a distinguished sequence of Bulletins, featuring such luminaries as Karl Pribram, Allen Walker Read, George F. F. Lombard, Russell Meyers, Jerome Bruner, Albert Ellis, Jerome Frank, Steve Allen, William Lutz, Lotfi Zadeh, Alan Meyrowitz and Nicholas Johnson, his own incisive, witty, often sly writings, writings by others less well known but worthy and, of course, your humble savant.

Among his writings, aside from his important essay-editorials for the Bulletin, the following are of ongoing detergent effect, critical reading for those who want to launder (dean up) their general-semantics: his early piece in ETC, published in 1962, "Non-Aristotelian Formulations: Solid or Fluid?"; in the General Semantics Bulletin, "Tarskian Metalanguages and Korzybskian Abstracting" (No. 46); "The Place of Aristotelian Logic in Non-Aristotelian Evaluating: Einstein, Korzybski and Popper" (No. 47); "Wu Li Thinking About Physics: Comments on The Cosmic Code by Heinz Pagels, The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav" (No. 51); and "Korzybski's Science and Today's Science" (No. 51). This body of work alone will assure Stuart Mayper's longevity in the annals of general-semantics.

But none of this adequately covers Stuart's impact as scholar and friend. His very presence in our formulational environment, his qualities as a man, his wry humor, his professional-level talent as a reciter of poetry, his amazing memory which enabled him to sing (rather terribly) all of the verses of "Ivan Skavinsky Skavar," reams of Gilbert and Sullivan, a correct version of "Old Man River" and enabled him to correct my misquotings of Shakespeare, his ability to concoct the best gin and tonic (with lime) I have had in my not-so-short life - on a most personal level, these are the aspects of Stuart Mayper that I and his many other friends will miss until our own very personal coagulations. On behalf of all readers of the General Semantics Bulletin and ETC, on behalf of his seminar students (especially those who struggled with his materials), I bid him a loving farewell.

ROBERT P. PULA