Communications

Gerald O’Connor

October 22, 2026

Gerald T. O’Connor, an emeritus professor of Medicine, Community and Family Medicine, and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Geisel School of Medicine, passed away on Oct. 22, surrounded by his family.

A pioneering epidemiologist, beloved teacher and mentor, devoted husband, father, and grandfather, and lifelong lover of the outdoors, Gerry lived a remarkable life defined by intellectual curiosity, generosity, humor, and an unwavering belief in the potential of others. He was born in Plainfield, New Jersey and earned degrees from Columbia University, Boston University, and Harvard University, and completed a fellowship in cardiovascular epidemiology at Harvard Medical School.

Gerry devoted his professional life to a simple but powerful idea: that studying the differences and results of surgical outcomes could improve and save lives. In 1987, he founded the Northern New England Cardiovascular Disease Study Group, a pioneering, multidisciplinary consortium of physicians and researchers whose work translated research into better care for patients across the country.

After losing his daughter Colleen to complications of cystic fibrosis when she was 20, Gerry brought the same approach to CF care. Using the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s national patient registry, that research demonstrated that a patient’s life expectancy could differ by nearly seven years depending on which care center treated them. He went on to help lead the Foundation’s national quality improvement effort. Over the following decade, care and life expectancy improved substantially at cystic fibrosis centers across the country.

Gerry’s impact as an educator and mentor may have been even greater. A gifted teacher, he brought insight, generosity, and infectious enthusiasm to mentoring a generation of health care researchers and leaders, whose collective impact on American health care has been significant.

And nowhere was that spirit more evident than in his role as a father. Gerry adored his four daughters and believed wholeheartedly in their potential. He nurtured their curiosity and independence, encouraged them to think critically, work hard, and care deeply about others, his pride in their accomplishments knew no bounds. Gerry shared his love of the outdoors with his wife Mary Ann and his daughters, teaching them to fly fish and cross-country ski and leading hikes throughout New England. A talented woodworker, Gerry crafted Shaker-style furniture, now treasured by family and friends as lasting expressions of his creativity and care.

Those who knew Gerry will remember not only his brilliant mind and extraordinary accomplishments, but also his warmth, quick wit, and unfailing kindness. He was a man who loved deeply, laughed easily, and made the people around him feel valued and capable of great things.

A celebration of Gerry’s life will be held on Dec. 5 at 1 p.m. at Rollins Chapel, with a reception to follow. The Dartmouth flag will be lowered Monday, Nov. 2 and Tuesday, Nov. 3 to mark his passing.

Edward Berger

September 4, 2026

Edward Berger, professor emeritus of biological sciences, died on Sept. 4 at 82. A prolific geneticist, Berger spent nearly four decades at Dartmouth working out how hormones switch genes on and off in the developing fruit fly. He also spoke widely on the ethics of genetic engineering.

Berger was born in New York City and grew up in the Bronx; he was the first in his family to finish college. He earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Hunter College in 1965, then a master’s and a doctorate in zoology from Syracuse University, where he completed his PhD in 1969. Two postdoctoral fellowships followed—first at Harvard with Fotis Kafatos, where he studied cocoonase, the enzyme a moth uses to break out of its cocoon, and then at the University of Chicago with Richard Lewontin, where he took up the measurement of genetic variation in wild populations. For the rest of his career, Berger worked between those two worlds, the molecular and the evolutionary.

He came to Dartmouth in 1975 as an assistant professor, after four years at the State University of New York at Albany. He was promoted to associate professor in 1977 and to full professor in 1984, and from 1990 to 1995 he held the Albert Bradley Third Century Professorship of Science. Berger’s early research asked how much genetic diversity hides inside a wild population. He measured enzyme variation in fruit flies, periwinkle snails, and water fleas. His lab later focused on how a developing insect knows to switch specific genes on and off at the right time. Much of that work centered on heat shock proteins and ecdysone, the steroid hormone that drives metamorphosis.

Berger published more than 100 papers over the course of his career with many in the top journals in his field. He was also very successful in supporting his research with continuous grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. In his last years of research, Berger worked on microRNAs, the small molecules that help time development. With Victor Ambros, then a Dartmouth colleague, and members of his own lab, he showed that ecdysone controls the let-7 microRNA during metamorphosis. Ambros shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNA.

Berger taught genetics for most of his career at Dartmouth. He also taught a seminar on the ethics of scientific research. An elected member of the Human Genome Organisation, Berger lectured widely on the promise and the risks of mapping the human genome. He worked with the Dartmouth moral philosopher Bernard Gert on the ethics of germ-line gene therapy, and the two wrote together on when altering human genes could be justified. After scientists announced in 1997 that they had cloned a sheep named Dolly, Berger pressed his own profession to lead the public debate. In a 1998 essay for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine titled “Will There Ever Be Another You?”, he argued that President Clinton’s ban on human cloning treated the question as settled before scientists and the public had reasoned it through. He wanted experts to convene, the way they had at the 1975 meeting that set the first federal rules for gene-splicing research.

Berger was also a dedicated administrator. He chaired the Department of Biological Sciences three times between 1988 and 2006; served as dean of graduate studies and associate dean of the faculty for interdisciplinary programs from 1994 to 1997; and was dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1997 to 2001, where he recruited faculty and helped bring in new funding. Colleagues remember the care he gave the people closest to his work, devoted to them and their success and he went out of his way to support younger faculty. Berger’s four children grew up helping him catch fruit flies, the workhorse of his research. He retired in 2014, and he and his wife, Barbara, moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia.

Berger is survived by his wife, Barbara Fritsche Berger; his children, Alex, Nick, Tanya, and Matt; and five grandchildren. The Dartmouth flag will be lowered in Berger’s honor on Thursday, Sept. 24, and Friday, Sept. 25.

John David “Jody” Trout Jr.

September 9, 2026

John (“Jody”) David Trout Jr., an associate professor of mathematics, died on Sept. 9. For more than three decades, Trout was a fixture of the Dartmouth math department, a specialist in abstract mathematics who kept his door open to anyone who wanted to talk.

Trout grew up in South Carolina and studied mathematics at the College of Charleston. He earned a master’s degree at Clemson University in 1988 and a doctorate at the Pennsylvania State University in 1995. He came to Dartmouth that same year as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2001. His research was in functional analysis and operator algebras, and specifically in noncommutative geometry, which studies spaces where the ordinary rule that "a times b equals b times a" no longer holds. Non-commuting arithmetic underlies quantum mechanics, and Trout was drawn to that seam between deep abstraction and the physics of the very small. His work focused on pure mathematics, while the questions that drove him came from physics.

Trout published nearly a dozen papers in major research journals. In 2000, with Higson and his frequent collaborator Erik Guentner, he wrote a monograph on equivariant E-theory that appeared in the Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society and is still widely cited. Two years earlier, with Higson and the operator theorist Gennadi Kasparov, he had proved a Bott periodicity theorem for infinite-dimensional Euclidean space, published in Advances in Mathematics. Grants from the National Science Foundation supported his work on index theory, elliptic operators, and E-theory across more than a decade. That work took him abroad: in 1999, at the invitation of the Peruvian Congress’s commission on science and technology, Trout lectured in Lima on the index theory of elliptic operators, and one of the talks was broadcast on Peru’s congressional news channel.

Trout’s longtime colleagues say he was a dedicated teacher who was popular with students. Trout developed Math 66, Mathematical Topics in Modern Physics, and taught it many times. He co-developed an interdisciplinary course, Mathematics and Science Fiction, and in recent years regularly taught Metric Spaces and Measure Theory, which included both undergraduate and graduate students. He advised undergraduate honors theses, sat on many dissertation committees over the years, and guided two doctoral students to their degrees.

Trout loved pop culture as much as he loved the universe’s big ideas. He hosted watch parties for season finales where graduate students stayed for hours afterward, playing games on the full-size arcade machine in his basement. Trout also had a gift for talking about mathematics with people who were not mathematicians. He gave public lectures he called the Fourth Dimension, inspired by Flatland, a Victorian novella about a two-dimensional world reckoning with the existence of dimensions beyond its own. He used that premise to walk audiences toward the harder question of what a fourth spatial dimension might look like. He gave these talks to the Dartmouth Mathematical Society, which he was closely involved with for many years, and at venues in the Upper Valley. He also reviewed science fiction novels for the Notices of the American Mathematical Society and wrote an essay on the mathematics of Op Art for a Hood Museum of Art catalog.

Trout is survived by his children, Natalie and Kyprian, and his wife, Deanne. The Dartmouth flag will be lowered in Trout’s honor on Monday, Sept. 21, and Tuesday, Sept. 22. Read the School of Arts and Sciences’ reflection of his life and work.

David Lagomarsino

September 7, 2026

David Lagomarsino, the Charles Hansen Professor Emeritus, died on Sept. 7. He was 80. A scholar of early modern Spain, Lagomarsino taught at Dartmouth for 45 years and won the graduating class’s award for distinguished teaching three times, matched by only one other professor in the College’s history.

Lagomarsino was born in Washington, D.C., on July 18, 1946, and spent his early years in the Acassuso neighborhood of Buenos Aires. His Argentine roots ran deep, in his love of the Spanish language, tango, and empanadas. After earning his PhD in 1974, Lagomarsino saw an advertisement for a job teaching Spanish history at Dartmouth. He moved to Hanover planning to stay four or five years and stayed for the rest of his career.

By his own account, he was not ready for the classroom. He learned on the job and earned tenure in 1980. Lagomarsino won the Jerome Goldstein Award for Distinguished Teaching, then chosen each year by vote of the graduating class, in 1984, 2005, and 2013. He received a teaching award in 1980, now called the John M. Manley Award, and in 2005 two Dartmouth Student Assembly awards, for advising and for teaching. On his retirement in 2017, Dartmouth gave him the Robert A. Fish 1918 Memorial Prize, which honors a newly retired professor’s career in undergraduate teaching.

Lagomarsino’s scholarship focused on Philip II and the Revolt of the Netherlands, and he edited the king’s papers on the revolt for Belgium’s Commission Royale d’Histoire. He worked in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Flemish alongside Spanish, and his research later turned to geographical information systems and the digital mapping of courtly travel. He had been an early adopter of the technology, co-developing a graphics-management program called ATLAS for the Apple Macintosh in 1986.

Lagomarsino gave Dartmouth as much in service as in scholarship. He chaired the history department, served as an associate dean and as a special counselor to the provost, co-mastered the Choate residences, and built a relational database that still tracks the academic accomplishments of the department’s faculty and students. He was also an effective fundraiser for the department’s academic enrichment funds.

Away from campus, Lagomarsino was an inventor and an artist, a cook known for his tapas, a magician, a builder, a gardener, and a tireless traveler. He is survived by his wife, Nancy; his sons, Jeremy and Peter, and their wives, Amy and Giuliana; and five grandchildren, Julia, David, Jonah, Chloe, and Leonardo. 

A private memorial service and burial will be held at a later date. The Dartmouth flag will be lowered in Lagomarsino’s honor on Thursday, Sept. 17, and Friday, Sept. 18. Read the full remembrance of his life.

Barbara Louise Jarvis Payson

August 17, 2026

Emeritus Assistant Professor of Medicine Barbara Louise Jarvis Payson, M.D., passed away peacefully on Aug. 17, 2026.

A brilliant, confident, generous woman defined by her steady faith and service to others, she earned her B.S. at The Ohio State University and her M.D. in 1957 at John Hopkins Medical School, where she was one of a small group of women. At Hopkins, Barbara met medical resident Henry Payson. They were married in 1958 as she began her residency in General Medicine at Yale Medical School. They had their first child Ann in 1960, John in 1961, Sally in 1962, and Susie in 1965.

When Henry was recruited to the psychiatry department at Dartmouth Medical School in 1963, the Paysons moved to Hanover. Barbara managed her family while working in Internal Medicine at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. She participated in several different research studies at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, notably the decade-plus Paris Project. Barbara was proud of her work on this influential study of US/UK heart attacks and coronary disease. In 1985, Barbara started practicing at Dick’s House, Dartmouth’s health service center. Though she retired officially in 1998, Barbara continued to substitute at Dick’s House as needed for another decade.

Barbara leaves behind many friends and family, who would like to thank all the wonderful people who helped her in her later years. Memorial services will be set at a later date. The Dartmouth flag will be lowered in Barbara’s memory on Monday, August 31st and Tuesday, September 1st. View her full obituary.

Lisa Celone

August 18, 2026

Lisa Celone, a beloved 33-year employee of Dartmouth, passed away on Tuesday, August 18.

Lisa served as Chief Operating Officer of Campus Planning & Facilities and later as Director of Communications, Campus Services. She was recognized not only for her skills and talents but for her warmth, character, and kindness, and she brought enthusiasm and energy into everything she did.

Lisa's son, Lane, followed in his mother's footsteps to Dartmouth and is a colleague on the Project Management team. We keep Lane and his sister, Camille, in our thoughts, and we join together in wishing them strength and peace.

Lisa will be greatly missed by her many colleagues and friends across the Dartmouth community. The Dartmouth flag will be lowered in Lisa's memory on Wednesday, August 26 and Thursday, August 27.

Robert A. Danziger

July 16, 2026

Trustee Emeritus Robert A. Danziger ’56—a distinguished real estate entrepreneur, community leader, and devoted husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather—passed away on July 16, 2026, at the age of 92. He lived a life marked by steadfast integrity, professional achievement, community leadership, and a deep commitment to family, education, and philanthropy.

Bob graduated from Dartmouth in 1956 and received his MBA from the Tuck School of Business. He founded Northland Investment Corporation in 1970 and led the company for 25 years as President and CEO. Throughout his career he was a lecturer in real estate and entrepreneurship at the Tuck School and Columbia Business School. In addition, he taught a course in real estate in the Master's degree program at the MIT Center for Real Estate.

An active and loyal supporter of Dartmouth, Bob was elected to the Dartmouth Board of Trustees where he served with distinction for 10 years. Bob felt that his greatest accomplishment was the family he built in partnership with his beloved wife, Sara (Levy). Their 70-year marriage was an inspiring example of enduring love and companionship. Their family was grounded and shaped by their shared values and unwavering support. He was a wonderful husband, an engaged and caring father, and a warm and loving grandfather.

Bob will always be remembered for his unusual ability to connect with people from all walks of life with genuine interest and warmth. The Dartmouth flag will be lowered in Bob’s memory on Tuesday, July 21 and Wednesday, July 22. Funeral services will be held on July 20, at 10:30 a.m., at Temple Shalom of Newton, 175 Temple St., Newton, MA. The family will observe shiva at Temple Shalom of Newton on Monday, from 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. ​View his full obituary.