Remembrance

Here are some e mails that I recently received from former graduate students.
If you would like remembrances posted, e mail wprinz@berkeley.edu (Bill Prinzmetal)
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I am so sorry to hear this. Bill was a mentor, employer (NIAAA grant) dissertation committee member and a friend.

We did work together on the development of tolerance to alcohol. He creatively applied his knowledge of sensation and perception to a person's sense of intoxication and came up with a methodology for measuring sense of intoxication. We published an article together with Roger Vogler in the Journal of Alcohol Studies in 1982.

Bill was fun and easy to be around--it was a joy to watch his mind at work. I remember many stimulating sessions with Roger and he, figuring out what our next experiment was going to be.

And his office--was a work of art--as we all said--Bill's order was in his mind, not his office.

I will miss him.
Roger Benton

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Bill was on my oral exam committee. He was a great mentor and role model. I remember meeting him for the first time when I visited Claremont after I was accepted into the Doctoral program. As I found a narrow path through his office he commented that an organized office was a sign of a deranged mind. After taking a couple of classes from him, I discovered that his mind was not only organized but brilliant. As a tribute to Bill, my office looks a lot like his did at our first meeting. What a loss to the profession. I join all of you in celebrating his life and career and mourn with you his passing.

Gerald E. Evans, Ph.D.
Professor of Management and
Information System

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Bill Banks came to Pomona College when I was a Ph.D. student at CGS. A small group of doctoral students and I approached him, asking if he would teach an overload, which for us was a small weekly seminar on Perception. He did. We learned. And rigor and truth be told, he made us read the original Tanner and Sweats, Signal Detection Theory, which is not exactly easy stuff! We learned nevertheless, and that was his gift to us.

Ray Paloutzian

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Bill was the chair of my dissertation committee, my mentor and my friend.  He was a lot of fun too. His sense of humor was fabulous. I can hear him laughing now with that wonderfully infectious laugh of his.

There seemed to be no limit to his creativity and curiosity. I was in the Cognitive program, and I loved to watch how Bill worked problems. I think one of the most important lesions I took away from Bill was that the essence of science was to first discover the important questions. I wish I had the chance to tell Bill how much he meant to me. His loss is deeply felt.

Robert J. Lunn, Ph.D.