On April 24, Mayen was driving a Toyota Corolla on Highway 92 on the side of the San Mateo Bridge when his car stalled. A black BMW station wagon rear-ended the Toyota, and a silver sedan rear-ended the BMW at 7:15 a.m., according to California Highway Patrol officer Art Montiel.

Shortly afterward, an ambulance transported Mayen to the Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, where he passed away the next day, Montiel said. The California Highway Patrol is still investigating the crash.

“When Jose passed, I had to make the announcement to let everyone know,” said Genevieve Negron-Gonzales, a UC Berkeley lecturer on global poverty and practice, in an email. “Several students commented that they were looking for him that morning because he was always there, on time, sitting near the front, with a warm smile. His absence was felt by all of us.”

At the age of 16, Mayen came to the United States from Guatemala, facing the challenges of learning a new language and adapting to a different culture. However, these difficulties did not stop him from excelling academically.

When Mayen entered his sophomore year at Menlo-Atherton High School, he knew little English and took English instruction classes, but by the time he was in his junior year, he had already caught up and was taking core English classes.

“He had a great sense of community,” said Stephen Ready, a bilingual resource teacher at Menlo-Atherton High School. “He was diligent about catching up, accelerating up as quickly as he could … In my 20 years as an educator, I have never known anyone like him.”

Before he came to UC Berkeley, Mayen attended Canada College, where he was heavily involved in many areas of campus life, such as serving as the vice president of the campus’ student government, working as a tutor for English learners and helping out at the reference desk in the library.

“We have a lot of students who start off the same way as Jose,” said David Patterson, a librarian at Canada College. “They’re immigrants, they have very little English and they have lots of dreams … Jose was able to do it. He was able to transfer to Berkeley.”

His passion for helping others led him to consider sociology as a major. Since he personally knew the challenges immigrants face upon coming to America, Mayen hoped to be an immigration lawyer, Patterson recalled. Even before he came to UC Berkeley, Mayen had already received his paralegal certificate.

One of the classes Mayen took at UC Berkeley was called “Educational Justice: Undocumented Migrant Students and Struggles to Remake ‘Citizenship.’”
“(Jose) saw himself as a member of a community and wanted to get involved in changing the conditions that make it so difficult for marginalized students to access a university education,” Negron-Gonzales said.

But beyond his academics, Mayen was also deeply committed to his family. When his father went into heart failure, he deferred his admission to UC Berkeley, according to Alicia Aguirre, mayor of Redwood City and a professor of Spanish literature at Canada College.

“He was just one of those students you loved having in class,” Aguirre said. “I challenge people to follow in his dreams, to do what you really believe in doing.”

Mayen is survived by his parents, his brother and his sister, who live in California.

Daphne Chen is the lead city government reporter. Contact her at daphnechen@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @dchen_dc.

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According to the report, Mayen, 23, was on his way to school when he stopped on the side of the San Mateo Bridge after he discovered he had a flat tire. His car was then struck by a speeding car.

A community group recently started a page on the website GiveForward.com to help pay for his memorial and burial. The group raised about $8,005 of its $15,000 goal as of early Tuesday evening.

Check back for more updates.

Daphne Chen is the lead city government reporter. Contact her at daphnechen@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @dchen_dc.

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Philologist, author and campus professor in the department of Slavic languages and literatures Viktor Zhivov died of lung cancer at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley on April 17. He was 68.

Zhivov first arrived at UC Berkeley in 1995 as a guest lecturer for one semester. He was a professor at Moscow State University at the time, and after proving to be an integral part of the campus’s expanding Slavic department, he became a permanent faculty member, according to Eric Naiman, a fellow professor in the department.

Zhivov spent the next 18 years teaching in both Russia and California, studying Russian and East Slavic culture and typically holding his courses at UC Berkeley during the spring semester.

“He was very accessible, and he was a really good lecturer and conversationalist,” Naiman said. “He didn’t repeat himself, he was incredibly lively and incredibly vivacious, and he was loved by his friends and colleagues.”

According to Naiman, Zhivov was deeply religious, profoundly open-minded and interested in new ideas and discoveries, having contributed to dozens of articles and books throughout his career.

“It was really inspiring to see someone be so invested in his work,” said Luba Golburt, an assistant professor in the department.

One of Zhivov’s most notable characteristics was his ability to connect with his students. Born in Moscow, Zhivov quickly adapted to teaching courses in English despite never having done so before joining UC Berkeley.

According to Golburt, who was mentored by Zhivov as a graduate student, Zhivov was very patient, respectful and inspiring.

“He brought in a very different approach to graduate teaching,” Golburt said. “His seminars were basically very well-prepared lectures and were very colorful, very entertaining. He usually taught very obscure material, and … he really made the material come alive.”

Zhivov’s students appreciated his ability to make their three-hour classes entertaining, enjoyable and less stressful than other graduate seminars.

“He was very passionate and excited about his work,” said Peter Golub, one of Zhivov’s graduate students this semester. “I can’t imagine anyone not liking him.”

Zhivov was also known for being incredibly hospitable to both his colleagues and students, even inviting them to spend time at his homes — both in Berkeley and Moscow. Past students traveled from across the globe to attend his funeral in Berkeley on Friday, according to Olga Matich, a professor emeritus in the department.

“He was incredibly stoic and strong at the end and was devoted to his work and his students, even correcting midterm exams in the hospital,” Naiman said. “Viktor really was an invaluable part of our program.”

Zhivov is survived by his wife, Maria Zhivov-Polivanova; their three children, Margarita Zhivova, Stepan Zhivov and Lina Zhivova; and their grandchildren.

Contact Claire Chiara at cchiara@dailycal.org.

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Blank was known for his films on American food and music and produced 42 films in a career spanning more than 50 years, according to Blank’s website.

“He definitely was a seeker of beauty and truth and the ways to express and articulate that,” said Blank’s son Beau Blank.

Blank, who received a degree in English from Tulane University in 1958, also attended graduate school at UC Berkeley. He left, however, to pursue filmmaking at USC in 1960 after being heavily influenced by Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

“(His films) really captured a special time when there was a lot more distinctiveness in cultures and how rich they were,” said Maureen Gosling, who worked with Blank for nearly 20 years. “That’s the legacy of his work.”

Friends and family said Blank captured an intimacy in work that reflected his kind and thoughtful character. Though he was known to be shy and almost painfully quiet, Blank won over subjects and audiences with his attention to the small treasures of everyday life. Gosling said he best captured moments without words.

“We’re looking for the golden moments,” Blank once said to Gosling.

The subjects Blank chose reflected a wide variety of interests, ranging from garlic to gap-toothed women, blues musicians to Tex-Mex Chicano culture and tea-making to California hippie-culture.

“(His films) offer something unique,” said Harrod Blank, Blank’s other son. “His interests were diverse — his films were diverse.”

Harrod recalls watching foreign films, traveling and attending music festivals as a child with his father. Now a filmmaker himself, he expressed appreciation for the independence and skills that his father taught him. Both Harrod and Beau treasured the time spent with their father in the later years of his life. In the last 15 years, Harrod and his father regularly attended and filmed the annual Burning Man Festival in Nevada.

But Blank was appreciated by many more than just family members. He won several awards, including the 2011 Career Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association, the Maya Deren Award for outstanding life achievement from the American Film Institute and a British Academy Award in 1982 for his film “Burden of Dreams.”

“I try to find a fresh way of looking at the world around me and making some sense of it,” Blank said in an interview after winning the 2011 Career Achievement Award. “Hopefully (it is) something positive, something lasting that the world would want to see 100 years from now.”

Along with leaving behind a legacy of a prolific career, Blank is survived by ex-wife Chris Simon, sons Harrod and Beau, daughter Ferris Robinson and three grandchildren.

Contact Jennie Yoon at jyoon@dailycal.org.

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Gumperz was an intellectual and adventurer — a curious, unassuming scholar who studied people and language all around the world. He used his research to fill the gaps that written language could not, focusing linguistic study on solving issues of social justice and helping people communicate across cultural boundaries.

He brought this passion for language to UC Berkeley, where he taught for 35 years until his retirement in 1991. The professor pioneered research in linguistic anthropology — studying language as a social and cultural endeavor as well as a form of written communication.

“He was totally unpretentious,” said lifelong friend and colleague Dan Slobin, who is a professor emeritus of psychology and linguistics at UC Berkeley. “I struggled at first to make sense of him and was finally just overwhelmed at how profound his ideas were.”

Among the focuses of Gumperz’s work was code-switching, a process in which speakers use multiple languages in one conversation. He also studied the way culture affected linguistics, finding at times that two people speaking the same language were in fact communicating very differently, depending on the different environments in which they learned to speak.

Born in 1922, Gumperz quickly became a scholar of language when he left his native Germany to finish high school in Italy. This move was prompted by an increasingly dangerous Nazi regime, which Gumperz, a Jew, eventually escaped by moving to Holland and then the United States in 1939.

Gumperz completed his education in the United States, eventually earning a doctorate in Germanic linguistics at the University of Michigan in 1954. He went on to work in India alongside other linguists, a post that had a lasting influence on his research.

Gumperz was an engaging, amiable man who could sit down with professors and farmers alike to talk about the world.

“He had a way of being totally at ease with people,” Slobin said. “He would just sit down with them. He was such a sweet man.”

This interest in people led Gumperz to the center of a vibrant intellectual community in Berkeley, which formed in the early 1960s. He often hosted dinner parties where graduate students and professors from different disciplines would discuss and share ideas, a practice that led to great support for interdisciplinary studies at UC Berkeley.

“We had constant afternoon and evening dialogues,” said Susan Ervin-Tripp, a professor emeritus who taught psychology while Gumperz was at UC Berkeley. “It was an exciting time.”

Gumperz left the UC Berkeley community after retiring but continued to work and study linguistics until his death.

“He opened people’s eyes to the fact that language isn’t just the language you read in texts,” Slobin said. “It’s in face-to-face interactions.”

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Lee, a class of 2010 Haas MBA graduate, co-founded the successful educational startup Magoosh while he was a student at the business school and was known as a driving force for entrepreneurship, encouraging others to pursue their ideas and build their own ventures.

“He believed in putting yourself behind an idea and focusing completely on what you want to accomplish,” said Pejman Pour-Moezzi, one of Lee’s former classmates and a co-founder of Magoosh.

As an entrepreneur, student and friend, Lee was described as a source of inspiration, admired for his courage and charisma as well as his ability to light up a room.

“He was absolutely fearless — fear wasn’t part of his vocabulary,” said Wendy Lim, Lee’s fiancee. “He embraced every experience and was always eager to try new things.”

Lee’s courage and dedication to entrepreneurship were particularly evident when, in the summer between the first and second year of his MBA program, Lee decided not to pursue a traditional internship but instead began working full time to build Magoosh.

“It was a brave move because at that point, we didn’t have any funding,” Pour-Moezzi said. “He brought the company to life.”

Lee’s courage and positivity extended to all aspects of his life, especially in the face of cancer, his fiancee added.

“He was never scared and was always focused on finding the right treatment — he remained optimistic and courageous to the end,” Lim said.

Now, Pour-Moezzi, Lim and third Magoosh co-founder Bhavin Parikh hope to instill that same courage in members of the Haas community by creating the Hansoo Lee Fellowship for Entrepreneurs. The fellowship will be used to support Haas MBA students wishing to pursue their ventures full time.

“This fellowship is a realization of Hansoo’s vision,” Parikh said. “He always talked about giving back. This is our way of celebrating him.”

Professor David Charron, Lee’s mentor during his time at Haas and an early investor in Magoosh, said that Lee will be greatly missed by the Haas community. He added that Lee exemplified the entrepreneurial spirit sought after in Haas’ graduate program.

“Hansoo was intellectually curious, constantly driven to learn and grow,” Charron said. “He was always trying to better himself. It is by virtue of people like Hansoo that our business school and entrepreneurship program are able to improve and grow.”

A memorial service will be held for Lee in Golden Gate Park on Monday.

Contact Natasha Osborne at nosborne@dailycal.org.

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Family and friends remembered Castle’s smile, which appeared throughout a photo slideshow depicting his life: as a baby grinning broadly, as a young man happily conquering the waves on his surfboard and as a UC Berkeley student confidently smiling with his parents in front of South Hall.

“How can you take such a beautiful life and put it into words?” said Castle’s brother Joe at the commencement of the memorial service.

Castle, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2012 with a degree in political science and comparative politics, had taught university-level English in China’s Guizhou province with the Peace Corps since August.

Castle’s love for teaching preceded his role as an English teacher in China. He spent more than six years as a tutor and mentored countless others in his hometown of Brentwood.

“Whenever our girls had a question about anything, they’d call him,” said Jolene Conder, a family friend whose two daughters Castle mentored. “He was real-life proof to them that anything was possible.”

Castle also built lasting relationships with his students in China, who would often eat dinner with him and affectionately referred to him as “Mr. Sunshine” because of his smile, according to Peace Corps regional director Helen Lowman, who read a letter expressing President Obama’s condolences.

Eric Behne, Castle’s high school friend, remembered that his first impression of Castle was that he was “extremely smart” and “good at everything,” but his fondest memories are the countless hours the two spent listening to the Beatles’ music and classic rock. Behne said that when he recalls his high school years spent with Castle, he can barely remember being in class at all.

Family and friends were unsurprised to hear that Castle would be serving in the Peace Corps, as he had spent a great deal of his childhood serving in his local community. Jami Palladino, another family friend, told of the way in which Castle had often helped out in her husband’s vineyard, pulling weeds and helping customers select fruit to purchase.

“I was so proud of the man he had become,” said Castle’s father, David. “I was so impressed with his intelligence, his compassion and his love for humanity.”

David Castle’s lasting memory of his son is of when the two visited a Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the de Young Museum, where he remembers his son standing in front of “The Starry Night” in quiet contemplation.

“That memory reminds me of a lyric once written about that painting,” he said, referring to “Vincent” by Don McLean. “‘The world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.’”

Megan Messerly covers city government. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

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Curtis, a native Californian and specialist in geology, received his undergraduate degree and doctorate at UC Berkeley in 1942 and 1951, respectively. Curtis continued at UC Berkeley as a professor until 1989. A memorial for Curtis is set to be held on Sept. 29 at the Faculty Club, according to Paul Renne, director of Berkeley Geochronology Center.

In the span of his nearly four decades at UC Berkeley, Curtis pioneered the usage of the potassium-argon dating method. He worked most notably with seismologist Jack Evernden in the 1960s to determine the precise age of the world’s earliest human fossil remains.

“They showed that the time scale of human evolution was much older than people had thought,” said Renne, a former student of Curtis’. “They worked with paleontologists to put together a timescale of mammalian evolution.”

Applying his research in potassium-argon dating, Curtis was able to determine that the hominid fossils discovered by Mary Leakey were over 1.85 million years old.

“He was the best (field geologist) I’ve ever known,” Renne said. “He could spot things that many others wouldn’t notice.”

In addition to his field work, Curtis enjoyed classical music, opera, being outdoors and spending time with friends and family.

“He was somebody who knew a great deal about many things,” said professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford University Gail Mahood. “He was something of a Renaissance man.”

As a member of the UC Berkeley faculty, former students and colleagues alike remember Curtis as friendly and approachable. He served as a mentor for many of his students over the course of his teaching career.

“He learned the geology of the Berkeley hills better than anyone and used it as a teaching lab,” said Wes Hildreth, a senior scientist for the Department of the Interior and Curtis’ former student. “He taught field geology methods to generations of students, and in that respect he was very influential in the whole field of geology and particularly volcanic geology. Now, many of us are spread out around the world with the skills that Garniss gave us.”

Curtis is survived by brother Ralston Curtis, daughters Penelope Curtis and Ann Pierpont Curtis, son Robin Hearfield Curtis, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. His wife of 45 years, Dorette Davis Curtis, died in 1987, according to a statement from the UC Berkeley News Center.

Contact Jennie Yoon at jyoon@dailycal.org.

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Glaser was an accomplished researcher of physics and neurobiology and was best known for winning the 1960 Nobel Prize in physics. He received the award when he was just 34 for his invention of the bubble chamber.

The bubble chamber made it possible for scientists to observe high-energy beams in liquid and subsequently discover new particles. The chamber worked by shooting a particle through a liquid heated above its boiling point and allowed scientists to track the particle by photographing the trail of bubbles left in its wake.

“It is well known that he made an enormous contribution with his early work in experimental particle physics,” said assistant professor Michael DeWeese of the UC Berkeley department of physics. “Don was ahead of his time in many ways. He was still active in computational neuroscience right up until a couple years before his passing.”

The department of physics has planned a memorial in Glaser’s honor set to take place later this spring.

Glaser co-founded one of the first biotechnology companies, Cetus Corp., in 1971 to discover methods that would aid agriculture and medicine. Cetus found a way to amplify DNA by starting a polymerase chain reaction.

“He was a really important member and leader of the biophysics community here at Berkeley,” said professor Carlos Bustamante of the campus department of physics, who said he knew Glaser personally. “We have lost someone who was a really active scientist and helped shape the biophysics community here at Berkeley.”

Michael Botchan, a professor of biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology at UC Berkeley, echoed Bustamante, adding that Glaser was a “broad and powerful scholar who was a pioneer in the biophysics industry.”

After winning the Nobel Prize, Glaser shifted his focus to neurobiology and conducted psychophysical experiments to further understand the human brain, including one to better understand how humans perceive motion.

He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1959 and began working in the campus Virus Lab, where he conducted experiments with bacteria and viruses. He invented equipment that aided scientists in growing these bacterial cells and studied how they reproduced and repaired themselves.

“Even though he did not make as big of a contribution to biology as he did to physics, he was an amazing scientist, and I salute him, and I am sad to hear of his passing,” said campus professor of biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology Jeremy Thorner.

Contact Seif Abdelghaffar at sabdelghaffar@dailycal.org.

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Castle was battling a short and unexpected illness in Chengdu, China, at the time of his death. His parents were with him in the hospital when he died.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, Castle had been teaching university-level English in Guizhou Province since August. He would have completed his service in July 2014.

“(People) talk about his passion and desire to alleviate global poverty and inequality,” said his father, David Castle. “Nick didn’t just talk about these things. He joined the Peace Corps and went to a remote part of the world to make a difference in other people’s lives.”

During his time on campus, Castle was involved in many areas of campus life. His roles included working as a resident assistant in Unit 3, a middle school tutor and a manager in the student-run entertainment program SUPERB.

“We knew how busy Nick was from morning until late at night with class and meetings,” his father said in a Facebook message. “What we didn’t realize was how he was making lifelong friendships and relationships that distance and time could not diminish.”

As “sneaks” manager for SUPERB for two years, Castle worked to bring celebrities and sneak previews of movies to campus. The group had its “best showings” last year with Castle as manager, according to UC Berkeley senior and fellow SUPERB manager Rachel Lo.

“He was always ready for a challenge, even if that meant booking a sneak preview of ‘The Rum Diaries’ with a huge talent, Johnny Depp, just five days in advance,” Lo said. “Nothing could really break him.”

Lo said that Castle always seemed to have fun and would work to make sure that others felt the same.

“He was one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met and truly had a heart of gold,” Lo said.

Castle also worked as an ASUC director for Global Outreach Week to raise awareness of social issues affecting the world, according to Sukhpreet Sembhi, a UC Berkeley senior and the deputy of Projects and Programs in the Office of the President.

“Nick was one of the most caring and impacting individuals I have met during my time at Cal,” Sembhi said. “He always took the time to stop and have a conversation with you if you ever bumped into him on campus.”

Castle graduated with a major in political science and comparative politics in 2012. He had hoped to work for the U.S. government or attend graduate school after his service in the corps, according to the Peace Corps press release.

“We have heard from so many of his Cal family from all over the world about how heartbroken and shocked they are about his sudden passing,” Castle’s father said. “We always felt, as all parents do, that our son was special. What a gift to know that his fellow Cal students and alumni felt the same.”

Castle was not only an inspiration to those on campus but also to his older brother Christopher, whom he inspired to go back to school at Berkeley City College to complete his associate’s degree.

“The only way I can think of Nick’s time here is like a shooting star,” his brother said in a Facebook message. “He was so beautiful, yet just as fast as they come, before you know it, they are gone.”

Castle is survived by his parents and three brothers who live in California.

“Nick was such a wonderful brilliant young man,” said his mother, Susan Castle, in a Facebook message. “My heart will be forever broken.”

Contact Megan Messerly at mmesserly@dailycal.org.

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