Dr. W. Buell Evans
Published 5:00 am Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Services for Dr. W. Buell Evans of Huntsville, Ala., are 3 p.m.,Thursday, July 17, at Shiloh Baptist church with burial in thechurch cemetery. Wilson Funeral Home is in charge ofarrangements.
Visitation is Thursday from noon – 2:30 p.m., at the church.
Dr. Evans, 85, died July 13, 2003. He was born in Monticello onJune 5, 1918, to Walter and Genevia Evans.
He was a retired professor from Emory University. He graduatedvaledictorian from Monticello High School in 1935, then earned adouble major in mathematics and chemistry at University of SouthernMississippi in 1939, graduating summa cum laude and receiving theBest Citizen Award. He also earned a master’s degree in mathematicsand physics in 1941 from LSU, a master’s degree in meteorology fromMIT, and a PhD in mathematics from University of Illinois in 1950.Following his first baccalaureate from Louisiana State University,he worked briefly as a weather observer with the Unites StatesWeather Bureau before becoming an assistant professor at LSU.
Evans joined the Air Force and was stationed in Cambridge, Mass.He was an instructor for the Flying Cadets, and also served in Utahbefore returning to Mississippi in 1942. He later served in theKorean Conflict and was stationed in Tokyo, Japan for two and ahalf years. He was an assistant professor at Georgia Institute ofTechnology (Georgia Tech) for two years. He traveled with a groupfrom UCLA as a visiting engineering professor to teach atJogjakarta, a university in Indonesia, for four years.
Then he taught as a full professor for 20 years in theDepartment of Mathematics at Emory University before retiring asprofessor emeritus. During his tenure, he took a year longsabbatical to teach at Federal University in Recife, Brazil. Evansalso enjoyed music and ballroom dancing as well as tree farming ona farm his parents left him and his siblings that he has passed onto his son.
Survivors are his wife, Dr. Margaret Peters Evans; hisdaughters, Patricia Hilliard of Williamsburg, Va., and MargaretRich of La Porte, Ind.; his son, David Evans of Huntsville, Ala.;and eight grandchildren.