Mervin E. Muller, age 90, died peacefully at home in Columbus, Ohio, December 3, 2018.

Muller was born June 1, 1928, in Hollywood, California, the son of immigrants from Hungary. One of four brothers, Muller graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), receiving AB, MA, and PhD degrees in mathematics.

Muller

Muller had a long career in academia, development, and industry, and his substantive focus varied from statistics to information technology to international development. He worked for IBM in New York early in his career. Later, he spent 15 years at the World Bank in Washington, DC. In academia, he was a professor of computer science for seven years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and finished his career at The Ohio State University, where he was chair of the computer science department, held the Robert Critchfield Professor of Engineering chair, and was director of the Performance Analysis Lab. Earlier in his career, he taught at UCLA, Cornell, Princeton, and George Mason University.

Muller authored 56 publications for professional journals and lectured or consulted in 37 countries. Among his professional honors were election as fellow of the American Statistical Association, election to the International Statistical Institute, and appointment as the founding president of the International Association of Statistical Computing.

In his retirement, Muller founded and hosted a nonfiction men’s book club. He took modern bridge lessons and traveled to compete in duplicate bridge tournaments with his wife, Barbara, and participated in several social duplicate bridge groups. He loved Dixieland jazz and classical music and enjoyed concerts by the Columbus Symphony, the Carpe Diem quartet, and Chamber Music Columbus. He was a board member of Chamber Music Columbus. He was also a season ticket holder to Buckeye football games and climbed the 141 steps to his seat at age 89.

Read more about Muller, sign his online guestbook, or share a memory.