Subject: for the list Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 11:16:17 -0400 (EDT) From: "W. Stephen Wilson" To: dmd1@lehigh.edu Don, for the list. Steve List: When in Japan for the Nishida Conference at Kinosaki we learned of the death of Sugawara. Some of his students agreed to write an obituary for him. Sincerely, Steve Steve, The following is a notice of the death of Sugawara we talked about at Kinosaki, Japan. Kenshi ************************************************************* It is with deep sorrow that we must inform you of the death of our advisor Masahiro Sugawara. He passed away on July 23, 2003, at the age of 75. A memorial service was held in the city of Hiroshima, Japan, on July 25. Sugawara Sensei has worked mainly on the theory of H-spaces as well as the K-group and the J-group of lens spaces. His career started at Okayama University as a research assistant in 1950. There he proved a theorem that a space X is to be an H-space if and only if there exists a quasi-fibration, having X as fiber, such that X is contractible in the total space. Nine years later, he moved to Kyoto University to be an associate professor. He extended the theorem he showed in Okayama to homotopy associative H-spaces. Furthermore he introduced the notion of a group- like space which is an H-space with homotopy associative multiplication of infinite order, and showed that a space is group-like if and only if it has the homotopy type of a loop space. This work has led to the A_n- space by J. Stasheff and then the operad by P. May. Until his retirement in 1991, he had been a professor at Hiroshima University for 25 years. During the period, our Sensei had more than twenty graduate students. Professor Sugawara was a mentor to have shown us how to spend an academic life. He had never said to students about annoyances of his society. This shows us how honorable and independent he was. Everyone who knew him will always remember his great contribution to the mathematical society. We share in his family's loss. Kouzou Tsukiyama Mitsunori Imaoka Yutaka Hemmi Kenshi Ishiguro *************************************************************