Arthur Dickinson Colburn, Jr. ’49 died on December 20, 2003, in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Born on June 24, 1927, in Boston, he prepared for college at Walpole (MA) High School and Tabor Academy in Marion, MA, and became a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity at Bowdoin, which he attended in the summer of 1945 before serving in the United States Navy for a year and attaining the rank of quartermaster third class. He returned to Bowdoin in the fall of 1946 and in February of 1951 as a member of the Class of 1949. In December of 1950, he completed the navigation course at the Boxell School of Navigation in Boston. Beginning in 1950, he worked for 40 years on board a number of research vessels at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, becoming captain of the Atlantis in 1960 and taking the ship to various locations, including France, the Mediterranean, Africa, and South America. In 1964, he became captain of the Asterias, the Institution’s first vessel, which observed its 50th anniversary in 1980. He retired in 1990 but worked in casual status at the Institution until 1997. Surviving are his wife, Barbara Atwood Colburn; a brother, Peter D. Colburn ’54 of Harpswell; two sons, Arthur D. Colburn III and David N. Colburn, both of Falmouth, MA; a daughter, Susan C. Nevler of Seattle, WA; and four grandchildren.