The many friends of Dow Vawter Baxter, including notably his devoted students and former students, are mourning his sudden death on New Year's eve, a few weeks before his sixty-eighth birthday, in Phoenix, Arizona. His heart apparently failed him after the exertion of travel.

Professor Baxter earned three degrees at this University, taught for two years at The University of Wisconsin, and then returned permanently to Ann Arbor to join the Department, about to become the School, of Forestry and Conservation. This was his fortieth consecutive year on its staff. He held also a professorship in the Department of Botany. During his career here, Professor Baxter's ever-widening knowledge of forest pathology was respectfully confessed; he became in particular a primary international authority on far-northern sylvics. Undertaking some twenty-five research expeditions to Alaska, he studied and tutored also in Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Newfoundland, and Russia. He was president of the Forestry Section of the International Botanical Congress in Stockholm in 1950 and honorary president of the same group in Paris in 1954.

Locally, Professor Baxter was known and loved for his ebullient friendliness. As he grew older his students, especially those accompanying him on expeditions, became in a manner surrogate sons. But the circle of his appreciative acquaintance extended far beyond his School. Along with scientific knowledge of Alaskan forests, he had also an abiding love of Alaskan life and folkways, which supplied matter for convivial entertainment and for warmly and widely admired lectures and films.

The Regents of the University now join the numerous and diverse assembly mourning the death of this dedicated scientist and beloved personality. To his surviving relatives, they would make known the honor in which his memory is held and extend them deepest sympathy.