1955 – 12/15/2007 -- Ralph Byers, age 52, passed away in Lawrence, KS, following a long fight with cancer.  Ralph received his Bachelor's Degree from McGill University in 1977, and a master's (1980) and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY in 1983.  After postdoctoral fellowships at Northern Illinois University (1983-1985) and North Carolina State University (1985-1987), he moved to the University of Kansas in 1987. During his graduate studies Ralph met and fell in love with Marge Bayer, who was also studying mathematics; they married in 1988.  Both Ralph and Marge accepted professorships in the Mathematics Department at the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1989.  He spent the remainder of his career as a professor of mathematics at Kansas, with visiting positions at University Bielefeld (1990), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2003), and TU Berlin (2004), and a sabbatical term at the University of California at Berkeley.  Ralph was known in the United States and Germany for his research in numerical linear algebra and numerical methods for eigenvalue.  He authored and coauthored scores of papers in mathematics journals.  He was an associate editor of Systems and Control Letters from 1993 to 1998, and, from 2003 on, of Linear Algebra and its Applications.  He was also known for his unique sense of humor and for his intelligence.  

Ralph was very much a family man, the well-being of his family and the education and future of his daughters always having the highest priority for him.  He is survived by his wife Marge Bayer and daughters Ruth and Nora Byers of Lawrence Kansas.