Mervin E. Muller

Mervin E. Muller, age 90, died peacefully at home in Columbus, Ohio, on December 3, 2018. He was born June 1, 1928, in Hollywood, California, the son of Emanuel and Bertha Muller, immigrants from Hungary. One of four brothers, Merv graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) receiving AB, MA, and PhD degrees in mathematics. He was a three-year varsity letterman in gymnastics at UCLA. He is survived by his wife, Barbara McAdam Muller to whom he was happily married for 55 years. He is also survived by their three sons, Jeffrey, Stephen (Alison), and Todd (Heidi) and nine grandchildren; Jeffrey's two sons, Ethan and Charlie; Stephen's children, Madeleine and Henry, and Todd's children, Theodore, Calvin, Amia, Miles, and Desmond. He is also survived by many loving nieces and nephews. Merv had a 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 7 years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and finished his career at The Ohio State University, where he was Chairman 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. Over the course of his career he authored 56 publications for professional journals and lectured or consulted in 37 countries. Among his professional honors were election to 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 Merv founded and hosted a non-fiction men's book club. The group has met for 15 years and read and discussed 173 books. He took modern bridge lessons and traveled to compete in duplicate bridge tournaments with Barbara and participated in several social duplicate bridge groups. He was a member of the Torch Club. He loved Dixieland jazz and classical music. He 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 years. A memorial service for Merv will be held at SCHOEDINGER NORTHWEST CHAPEL, 1740 Zollinger Rd. on Sunday, December 9, 2018 at 1 p.m. with a reception immediately following until 3 p.m. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Columbus Symphony, Chamber Music Columbus, or the Southern Poverty Law Center.