Richard Woodbury Sampson ’44 died on April 1, 2004, in Blue Hill, Maine.

Born on April 24, 1922, in Newton, MA, he prepared for college at Newton High School and became a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity at Bowdoin. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1943 to 1946, attaining the rank of first lieutenant. He received his Bowdoin bachelor of science degree in June of 1944 after receiving credit for the courses that he took in the Air Forces Meteorological Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After the war, he received a master of education degree from Tufts University in 1947 and a master of arts degree in mathematics from Boston University in 1951. He was an instructor at the Franklin Technical Institute in Boston from 1946 to 1949 and at the New Preparatory School in Cambridge, MA, from 1949 to 1952. He joined the faculty at Bates in 1952, where he taught mathematics for 38 years, retiring in 1990. In his retirement he continued to teach on a part-time basis at Bates, Northeastern University, and the University of Southern Maine. He also taught at several summer institutes for high school and college mathematics teachers at Bowdoin in the 1960s and the early 1970s. He was for many years a faculty advisor to the Bates College Outing Club, and was a member of the board of directors of the Maine chapter of the Appalachian Trail Club. As a trustee of the Lewiston Public Library, he was co-founder of the LPL Plus APL cultural program of the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries. After he moved to Blue Hill in 2002, he tutored mathematics in local schools, was a volunteer at the local food cooperative, and was active in the First Congregational Church of Blue Hill. He was married in 1948 to Jean Byers, who died in 1996 after serving for many years as a member of Bowdoin’s governing boards and who had received an honorary doctor of laws degree at the College in 1995. He is survived by a son, Stephen, of Bar Harbor; a twin sister, Eleanor Carberry of Wells; and three grandchildren.