Obituaries
F. Brock Fuller.
1927 – 2009
F. Brock Fuller, emeritus professor of mathematics, died on November 6 at the Rafael Convalescent Hospital in San Rafael, California, four years after being diagnosed with diffuse Lewy body disease. He was 82.
After receiving his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees from Princeton, Fuller came to Caltech in 1952 as a research fellow. He became an assistant professor of mathematics in 1955 and was appointed associate professor in 1959, and professor in 1966. In 1994, he became professor emeritus.
Fuller worked on the topology of how curves twist and coil, an endeavor prompted by the need for a quantifiable description of the supercoils being found in double-stranded DNA helices. A DNA supercoil forms when the famed double helix is itself twisted and coiled, the way the cord on the wall phone in your kitchen likes to do. A DNA molecule can be thousands of times longer than the cell whose blueprints it contains, so twisting it into compact supercoils allows it to fit inside the cell. Fuller developed a quantity called a writhing number, which is the number of times the double helix crosses over itself. The sum of the writhing number and another quantity called the twisting number, which Fuller defined as the number of times each DNA strand twists around the other, together measure the amount of supercoil in the DNA.
In the early 1980s, Fuller—who was also an audiophile—was involved in analyzing digital recording technologies as they began to reach prominence in the audio-entertainment industry. Working alongside Caltech colleagues such as Gary Lorden (BS ’62) and James Boyk, Fuller examined music piped into Thomas Laboratory from Dabney Lounge, comparing various signals.
Fuller moved to San Rafael, in northern California, in 1996. He is survived by his wife, Alison Clark Fuller of San Rafael; his daughter, Lynn D. Fuller of San Francisco, her husband, William Bivins, and their four children, Samuel, Zachary, Elizabeth, and Claire Bivins; and his sister, Cornelia Fuller of Pasadena.
— JW,MW
