Seymour Parter

Madison - Seymour Victor Parter, Age 95, of Madison, Wisconsin, passed away peacefully on Friday, October 21, 2022, at his home. Seymour was born on June 9, 1927, in Chicago, Illinois. He became acquainted with hard work at an early age, when he took over running of his family’s restaurant as a teenager. He earned a B.S. degree and an M.S. degree in Mathematics both from the Illinois Institute of Technology while continuing to run the family business.

In March 1951, Seymour left Chicago for the remote mountains of New Mexico, where he became a staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratories. It was here that he was introduced to serious scientific computing and became friends with many outstanding mathematicians and physicists. In October 1951, he was handed a manual for a new computer (the SEAC) and sent to Washington to program the computer for Los Alamos.

In 1953 he was sent to New York to work on the new UNIVAC computer for Los Alamos, where he also enrolled in graduate school at the Courant Institute of Mathematics and earned his Ph.D.

Seymour has described the 1957-1958 academic year as his most important year; he met his wife Ruth while horseback riding near Boulder, Colorado, and he learned to ski.   While never explicitly stated, Seymour felt that skiing was a requirement of his marriage with Ruth. They traveled the world together, always hiking and being adventurous.

Ruth and Seymour were married in October 1957 and celebrated 65 years of marriage this month. They raised two sons who are both computer scientists.

His long career at the University of Wisconsin Madison started in 1963 with a joint appointment to the Mathematics and Computer Science departments, including a stint as the chair of the Computer Science department.

Seymour is survived by his wife, Ruth; his sons, David and Paul; daughter-in-law, Susan, and grandchildren, Alicia, Ezra, and Danielle.

There will be a small graveside service at Beit Olamim Cemetery at Sunset Memory Gardens on Tuesday, October 25, at noon. Tuesday evening, there will be a Shiva via Zoom

Cress Funeral & Cremation Services

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