Walter F. Buckley, Professor of Sociology at UNH from 1971 to 1985, died Jan. 27, at age 84, at home in Durham.

A Renaissance man, born in Lynn, Mass., he read widely in related sciences. He was a pioneer in social systems theory. He also He was also a cool interpreter of early jazz when playing his tenor sax. His three major contributions challenged generally accepted views of our society: Sociology and Modern Systems Theory (1967); Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist (1968, an anthology of readings); and Society: A Complex Adaptive System (1998).

He leaves his wife, Cicely, of Durham; his daughter Helen Lamb, of
Ames, Iowa; and his son, Mark William Buckley of Cambridge, Mass.

One of Buckley's favorite poems was "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.