Lasting Memories

Richard (Dick) C. Singleton
1928-April 8, 2007
Morgan Hill, California

Richard (Dick) C. Singleton, 79, a longtime mathematician with Menlo Park-based SRI International, died April 8.

He was raised in Portland, Ore. He received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and later attended Stanford University, receiving a master's degree in Business Administration and Mathematics and a doctorate in Theoretical Statistics.

A distinguished mathematical statistician and computer scientist, his decades of research included seminal work in mathematical and computer data sorting algorithms, artificial intelligence and quantitative legal analysis. He worked for SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) for 39 years, during which he patented computer-sorting programs, created math algorithms related to the Fourier transform, and introduced a concept named for him, known as the "Singleton bound."

In the early 1970s while at SRI, he collaborated with Lawrence Pinneo on a DARPA project in what is considered to have been the first successful attempt at reading the human mind by a computer. He received honors from the Research Association of America and authored and co-authored many articles.

In his earlier days, he joined Martin Luther King Jr.'s followers on the walk from Selma to Montgomery. He was an avid sailor and navigator. He was also a former member of the Palo Alto Folk Singing Group. His lifelong interest in nature encompassed astronomy, birds, California native grasses and flowers, and his devoted golden retrievers.

He is survived by his wife, Sibyl Singleton of Morgan Hill; his six children, Pamela Singleton Martin (Jeff) of Gilroy, Peter C. Singleton of Menlo Park, Nancy Singleton Hachisu (Tadaaki) of Japan, Gordon M. Singleton (Ellen) of Concord, Lisa Singleton Quijano (Maurico) of Morgan Hill, and Martin S. Singleton of Urbana, Ill.; his two stepsons, Ian Mitchell of Santa Cruz and Derek Mitchell (Anita) of San Anselmo; three siblings, Dorothy Ayers of Bellevue, Wash., Ken Singleton (Fumi) of Portola Valley and Marta Powers (Peter) of Eugene, Ore.; 10 grandchildren and one great-grandson.