Condolences

To share a memory or leave a message of condolence, e-mail Simon Marketing and Communications.

 

"Paul Schweitzer was one of the more memorable teachers I had during my tenure at Simon. I enjoyed his Operations Research enormously and the material I learned has stayed with me throughout my career. He was enthusiastic, approachable and knowledgeable--the University community and his students will miss him enormously. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family. May the grace of God be with you at this difficult time."

Jon Van Duyne '85

"Paul, while so very shy, touched many lives and helped so many young people decide a path in life. His contributions were numerous and may not have always been noticed by those of us around him, but that did not stop his mind from constantly turning out a new problem. He wrote constantly and collaborated till the end. I am grateful for his friendship, many tidbits of wisdom and constant jokes. By the e-mails and calls that I get, I find his many colleagues will also miss him greatly. Be proud of all that he was and always remember the best."

Mary K. Kraus, Faculty Assistant to Professor Schweitzer

"It is a shock for the Dutch research community in applied probability to hear that Professor Paul Schweitzer has passed away. Paul had many friends in Holland and was highly regarded by his warm personality and his great achievements in the field of applied probability and stochastic optimization. Paul was a very modest person and did not get always the recognition he deserved, but Paul was the inventor of the semi-Markov decision model and the person who made the breakthroughs in the algorithmic analysis of Markov decision problems. His friends in Holland will miss him and will never forget him."

Professor Henk Tijms, Vrije University, Amsterdam

"Paul was a very intelligent and kind person. I enjoyed a lot of conversations with him. I have learned a lot from him not only because he was my teacher but also he was my friend, a wonderful person. I have kept his lecture notes and will refer to them for a long time. Goodbye, Paul."

Xiaobo Zheng

“I was very sorry to hear of Professor Schweitzer's passing today. Dr. Schweitzer was very supportive of the Class of 1978 M.B.A. candidates concentrating in Operations Management. He was also very supportive of Exxon initiatives to implement routing and scheduling algorithms into computerized truck dispatching systems in the early 80's. I had the pleasure of returning to the University of Rochester to utilize his consultative services in this area. I fondly recall these couple of days; he was of course knowledgeable and insightful, but also rooted in reality and fun to spend time with.”

Steve Shepard ’78

“I am saddened by the news about Paul’s loss. Paul has been my teacher and guide while I attended the Ph.D. program at the Simon School, and I was fortunate to be his mentee for four years.  Paul was not only teaching the coursework materials but also his thoughtful approach and passion for math problem solving. He was one of the kindest people I met –always calm, always thoughtful, always there to help out with his humble smile. My experience in the Ph.D. program at Rochester has changed my life. And Paul is one of the people who will always be part of that experience. We will miss you Paul, but the memory of your smile is treasured with us forever.”

Yaniv Vakrat, M.S.  ’99, Ph.D. ’01

“Besides being a brilliant scholar, Paul was also a very kind, warm and helpful colleague. When I took on teaching a course he had taught for many years, he freely shared his teaching materials with me. Knowing that his night owl hours were not in sync with mine, he invited me to enter his office anytime to look for useful materials. He has sat for hours with me to sort through complex mathematical problems and, best of all, always had an off-color, politically incorrect joke to share. (I am still blushing from some of the e-mails he sent me.)  In recent years, his health problems interfered with his work, but I could always count on getting a New Year’s card from Paul. I’ll greatly miss him.”

Professor Edieal Pinker, Simon Graduate School of Business, University of Rochester

"I was saddened to hear of Paul's passing. His Ph.D. courses at Simon were memorable both for their challenging nature and the applicable value of the content. While always pushing us as students, Paul was also very kind and helpful. His depth of knowledge of the field was vast, and I always felt like I only learned an embarrassingly small fraction of what Paul knew. The Simon School and the field have lost a great contributor. My condolences also go out to his family."

 Reynold Byers, M.S. '97 Ph.D. '00

"As a Ph.D. student at the Simon School, I took numerous courses with Paul. I am very proud and fortunate to have had him as a teacher and mentor. He has had an impact on lives of many students like me, and I will always cherish my interactions with him. He had a joke for every occasion, and I don’t remember ever seeing him without a smile on his face. When I first started doing research, I used to get very frustrated when I would hit a roadblock. I remember bumping into Paul one night in the school corridors (you could always find Paul in school at late hours), and he said something that always makes me smile, '…If there is a problem that you NEED to solve, you will solve it!' I will miss you Paul."

Sameer Hasija, Ph.D. ’08
 

 "My thoughts and prayers are with Paul's family and friends. Paul made an immense contribution to his field, and he also made life much richer for his colleagues and students. Paul was nocturnal when we were at Simon together. I would see him come in just as I was leaving, and leaving as I was arriving. On the nights I worked late, Paul was always happy to clear a space among his piles of books and papers, sit me down, and chat about research. He would get an excited gleam in his eye when he was talking about queueing approximations, as well as when he was telling very rude (and very funny) jokes. I'll always appreciate his kind advice about research, and I'll remember the sight of him filling a whiteboard with equations for his Ph.D. students--even when he was extremely ill. He will be missed and remembered."

(Former Simon) Professor Rob Shumsky

"Paul was a gentle man who always had a smile for us in class. He was encouraging as a mentor as he always treated us as capable of mastering the material he was teaching. The hand-outs for his classes were huge and were filled with his personal, hand-written notes (which were difficult to decipher at times!) on so many subjects. The classes were always interesting as he would come in and just start writing down equations for the reactions of a nuclear bomb, or the search methods to find an enemy submarine, as if these were the most normal things in the world to talk about. My prayers are with his family at this difficult time. Paul made a difference in so many lives."

David Huff '04