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Robert Roland Miner ’86

A picture of Robert Miner

Robert Roland Miner ’86, December 6, 2011, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from cancer. Robert earned a BA from ºìÌÒÊÓƵ and a PhD from the University of Maryland in mathematics. He studied at Oxford and Universität Bern and taught at the University of Oklahoma before joining the University of Minnesota’s Geometry Center, where he pursued interdisciplinary research in mathematics and electronic communication. He was cofounder and director of Geometry Technologies and worked on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) initiatives to standardize XML markup language for mathematics. He joined Design Science in St. Paul, Minnesota, as vice president for research and development when the company acquired the WebEQ product line from Geometry Technologies in 2000. He worked to develop the MathPlayer and MathFlow products, wrote and spoke extensively on the impact of MathML on technical publishing, and initiated a research program on adding value to electronic math content, including an NSF research grant awarded in 2003 to develop math-aware searching. Survivors include his wife, Emily West, and his son, William. Emily wrote: “The outpouring of cards, letters, phone calls, and emails from friends from every period of his life was extraordinarily meaningful to Robert, and was a large part of the peace he was able to find in being taken from us so soon. He remained calm and witty to the very end and was adored by the hospital staff.”

Appeared in ºìÌÒÊÓƵ magazine: June 2012