William Boos

WILLIAM BOOS

Iowa City

Born March 16, 1943, in Janesville, Wis., William Boos was the son of Ethel Connell Boos and Col. Francis H. Boos. As the child of a military officer he lived in several places during boyhood, among them Taiwan, Tehran, Colorado, Kentucky and Fort Sheridan and Glenview, Ill.

After graduating from New Trier Township High School in 1960, William studied German at the University of Heidelberg and obtained degrees in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin (B.A., 1964), the University of Massachusetts (M.A., 1965), and the University of Wisconsin (Ph.D., 1971), where he specialized in set theory. After teaching mathematics for some years, he returned to the University of Chicago for a Ph.D. in philosophical logic (1981). Over the course of his life he taught philosophy at the universities of North Carolina, New Mexico, Copenhagen and British Columbia, and mathematics at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of Iowa. He also enjoyed a brief period of work at the Wittgenstein Archive in Bergen, Norway. His publications applied mathematical models to classical philosophical problems in epistemology.

Bill loved classical music and the study of European languages, among them German, French, Latin, Greek, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic, and he took pleasure in semesters spent abroad with his wife, Florence (nee Saunders) in Iceland, Denmark, France and Cambridge, England. A gifted and rigorous stylist, he helped edit his wife's writings on 19th Century literature.

A pacifist and conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, over the years he worked for several political campaigns on behalf of anti-war candidates.

Bill also loved mountain scenery, and in later years took satisfaction in jogging and hiking near the cabin he had designed on the Sunshine Coast, British Columbia, facing mountains and overlooking water.

In private life, he was a man of orderly and frugal habits, greatly attached to his family and close friends.

William died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest at his Iowa City home on April 1, 2014. He will be deeply missed by his wife of 48 years, Florence Boos, and their son, Eugene Christian Boos of Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Messages may be sent to www.lensingfuneral.com, and any memorial gifts to Oxfam International, Doctors Without Borders or the American Friends Service Committee.

A remembrance service is planned for 11 a.m. May 3 at the Davenport Street entrance to Hickory Hill Park.