Obituaries

Retired Wheaton College Chemistry Professor Neal Orin Brace: 1922-2013

Neal Orin Brace, a chemistry professor at Wheaton College from 1966 until he retired in 1988, died of natural causes at age 91 at his Carol Streem home on July 27, the Chicago Tribune reports.


Brace was a successful research chemist before he returned to teaching in 1963, when he took a position at North Park College in Chicago. He joined Wheaton College’s faculty in 1966, according to the Tribune, who talked to Brace’s son, Roger.


Brace was born in Osceola, Wis. He attended the University of Minnesota, where he got his undergraduate degree. During service in  the Army Air Forces in World War II, he was an instructor at Yale University’s radio and radar school, states the Tribune. After the war, he went on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he achieved a doctorate in organic chemistry. He taught undergraduate students during that time.

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He became a research chemist for an Eastman Kodak subsidiary before he returned to teaching, the Tribune said.


Brace was preceded in death by his first wife, Evelyn, in 1994. He is survived by his second wife, Marilynn Bach, whom he married in 1996. He also is survived by his sons Roger and David; four daughters, Judy, Nancy, Linda and Sharon; nine grandchildren; and two brothers, Ray and Leo, the Tribune reported. Services already were held.

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