Passing: Pilar de la Torre

Passing: Pilar de la Torre

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Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Pilar de la Torre, 68, emerita professor of computer science, passed away peacefully Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012, at her home in Durham, following a two-month struggle with advanced lung cancer.

Her obituary from the Portsmouth Herald follows.

Pilar de la Torre was born in Bembibre, a town in northwest Spain, on Feb. 1, 1944. When she was 3 years old, her family emigrated to Argentina and settled in the city of Alta Gracia, where she eventually attended high school. In 1967, she graduated with highest honors and a gold medal in mathematics from the University of Córdoba, Argentina. In the same year she came to S.U.N.Y. Buffalo to study for a Ph.D. in mathematics, which she completed in 1975. She passed up opportunities to do post-doctoral work at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University; instead she accepted a junior membership for a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where she studied under the guidance of André Weil, the renowned French mathematician who was one of the foremost number theorists of the second half of the 20th century.

Later, Pilar became interested in the newly emerging field of computers, started graduate studies again, this time at the University of Maryland, College Park, and achieved her second doctorate in computer science in 1987. Following a stint of post-doctoral work in that subject at the University of Maryland, she joined the Department of Computer Science at UNH in 1989 as a junior faculty member, and rose at an admirable pace through the ranks until she was promoted to full professor in 2000.

Always true to her pedagogical principles, she was a devoted teacher and gave meticulous attention to all the students who chose to work with her, graduate and undergraduate. A productive scholar, Dr. de la Torre had her research papers published by leading journals in the United States and abroad, and she gave invited lectures as well as conference papers from Canada to Japan and in a number of countries in between. In 2009, she took a well-earned retirement, and was able to enjoy three years of relaxed and comfortable life in her beloved Durham, before the diagnosis of her ailment. When fate showed up totally uninvited and rudely gave her "weeks or months" to live, she was shocked but not intimidated. She looked death straight in the eye and neither blinked nor complained.

She leaves behind her proud and grateful husband of 41 years, John Duffy, and his family in Ireland and England. Other survivors include her sisters, Diana Malena de la Torre (with husband Richard McCallan), Matilde de la Torre, and her brother Cesáreo de la Torre (with wife Marisa C. Puig), all of Alta Gracia, Argentina; as well as nieces, nephews and cousins in Argentina, England and Spain.

She was predeceased by her father, Cesáreo de la Torre, and her mother, Pilar Miguelez de de la Torre.

In keeping with her style and according to her wishes, Pilar was cremated privately, without service or ceremony. Her ashes will be scattered in Durham at one of her favorite inlets to Little Bay.

The Duffy and de la Torre families are grateful to the doctors, nurses and staff at the Seacoast Cancer Center of Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, Dover, for fine professional care, and to the nurses and aides of Wentworth Home Care and Hospice for expert and sensitive help in the home. A special word of gratitude to Dr. Peter J. Degnan for being the ideal primary care physician, full of compassion and willing to make house calls, and to Margaret Sargent and family for devoted and constant assistance in a difficult time.

It is suggested that anyone wishing to honor Pilar's memory should make a donation in her name to the New Hampshire chapter of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (www.acscan.org/action/nh).

 

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