Vaclav E. Mares, professor emeritus of economics, died on Feb. 8 in Sarasota, Fla. Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1902, he was a graduate of the Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris and received his Ph.D. in 1926 at Charles University in Prague. During the following 20 years, he worked in industrial management in Prague. In 1946 he was appointed commercial counselor to Czechoslovakia's Embassy in Washington with special assignment at the United Nations in New York. In 1948, after the communist takeover of his native country, he resigned and joined the faculty of Penn State where for the following 21 years, he lectured in areas of foreign trade and international economics.
Elburt Franklin Osborn, former dean of the College of Mineral Industries and vice president for research at Penn State, died Jan. 19. He was 86.
In 1946, Osborn came to Penn State as chairman of the Department of Earth Sciences. He was dean of the College of Mineral Industries from 1952 to 1958, and vice president for research from 1958 to 1970. After leaving Penn State in 1970, he went on to serve as director of the United States Bureau of Mines and senior research fellow at Carnegie Institute. He was president of the American Ceramic Society, Geological Society of America, Geophysical Society of America and the Society of Economic Geologists. He was a member of several panels, adviser to congressional committees, published more than 100 scientific articles and received honorary degrees from three universities.
Osborn is survived by his wife, Jean, and his sons, James and Ian.