| Robert Mitchell Tufty | |||
| Father: | Harold Guilford Tufty, Sr. | ||
| Mother: | Edith Kellogg Henry | ||
| Born: | 1948/09/03 | Place: | Washington, DC |
| Died: | 1999/06/30 | Place: | Rockville, MD |
| Married: | Margaret Jane Morrell | ||
| Partners in Life: | 1968/12/17 to 1999/06/30 | ||
| Children: | Xavier Mitchell Tufty | ||
Biography
"Respect the Form and Substance with Equal Dignity." Robert Mitchell Tufty was born in Washington, DC on September 3, 1948 to Harold Guilford Tufty and Edith Kellog Henry Tufty. He lived in the area until the age of fourteen. His father died when he was eleven, and from that time until he left home, he experienced a rather nomadic life with his mother and younger sister. Finally, when his mother deposited him with aquaintances in Madison County, Virginia, he decided to finish school there, with the help of a number of people associated with the school system. He finished high school at age 16, and also completed his first year of college at the University of Virginia Extension Center in Madison, Virginia. He was quite proud of the fact that he made a perfect 800 on the Advanced Math version of the SAT test. He then attended the University of Virginia, winning a degree in mathematics in December, 1968. While he attended school, he also worked in the University's Computer center, where he continued on after graduation.
In 1968, he also married a high school friend and college sweetheart, Margaret Morrell, of Radiant, Virginia. The following summer, she gave birth to their only son, Xavier Mitchell Tufty, shortly after her graduation from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The family resided in Charlottesville, Virginia until a move to Toronto Canada in 1970. Robert worked for the Burroughs Corporation Canadian Headquarters for a year and a half before returning to Charlottesville to enter graduate school in Biophysics. While there, he co-authored several papers published in scientific journals.
In 1974, Robert moved back to the Washington DC Metropolitan area and held jobs with several software firms, (EG&G Mason, Biomed Systems, KeyData Corporation, and Polaris Corporation). While he worked in the area, he did his first work for DARPA and the infancy of the Internet. He also worked for Rexham Corporation as a consultant.
In early 1981, he moved to Silicon Valley to work for Hewlett Packard, where he worked for three years.
Returning to the DC Metropolitan area, he did more consulting and worked for Apex Corporation for five years.
For years after he settled in Rockville, MD, Robert discussed a data collection problem a neighbor was having in the Historical Preservation community ( data was being collected, but no real smooth way to interpret it ). Towards the end of 1995, the Java programming language was made public, and he decided to apply it to his neighbor's problem. The result was a company formed with the neighbor, J Bryan Blundell, called SensiView Corporation. He had completed the basic architecture and tested it with a number of different Data Aquisition tools at the time of his death, and was looking forward to writing, training others, and to turning his attention to the way math is taught in the schools.
On the personal level, Robert had many interests, including history, politics, philosophy, photography, art, (his life partner, Margaret, was a clothing and costume designer, and painter) and music. During his college years, and throughout his life he was an activist for civil rights, the Anti-Vietnam war movement, responsible use of the Internet, better Math education, and the Reform Party. He was a strong promoter of the Internet as a media for dissemination of information. His friends, collegues, and wife found him to be a natural and excellent teacher in the areas of Math and Internet technology. He styled himself as "The Homeless Mathematician" on his personal web site, Formal.com because he felt that the importance of math had been pushed aside with the end of the Space Race. However, he also found two half-brothers on the Internet, one with whom he developed a close relationsip in his final years. He was the original author of this Web Site, because of that meeting.
Robert left behind his wife and partner of more than 30 years, Margaret, his son Xavier, one sister, Ann, two half-brothers (Harold and James), and numerous nieces and nephews.
to
mmt@tuftyweb.com.