David Lissner earned a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from MIT in 1953, was a design engineer at North American Aviation from 1953 to 1955, and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell in 1959, writing a dissertation under Israel Herstein. He held an ONR post-doctoral fellowship and was a research associate at Northwestern 1959-1960, and was an instructor at Yale 1960-62. He them joined SU as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor in 1964 and to professor in 1971. He was an associate professor at Copenhagen University 1970-1971, on leave from Syracuse.

He published 8 research papers, generally in linear algebra and commutative algebra, and he directed 6 Ph.D. dissertations: D. Wayne Cassell (1967), Anthony Geramita (1968), Nadine Hanson Moore (1969), Joseph Cavanaugh (1970), Chin Yeang Lim (1970), Edward Hogan (1971) and Dennis Luciano (1974). He held an Andrew Mellon Curriculum Development Grant 1979-1980, was also an instructor in the SU Auburn Prison program 1981-1983 and was a field supervisor in the SU project advance program for 19 years. As a result he visited 6 or 8 high schools a year, although for 6 years after retirement he visited 21 or 22 schools. He wrote several Self-Paced Calculus Study Guides for the Center for Instructional Development, and Kendall/Hunt Publishing published two undergraduate texts he wrote: Introduction to Elementary Probability 1984 and Applications of Elementary Probability 1989. He also wrote a text on the use of the TI-81 graphing calculator in calculus, published by West.

Dave served many times on the Executive, Graduate and Undergraduate Committees, was assistant chair 1983-1984 and was a member of the Chairmanship Nominating Committee 1987-1988. For the College of Arts and Sciences he served on the student standards committee 1978-1981 and on the committee on scholarship and research 1982-1985, as chair 1983-1985. He was a member of the board of graduate studies 1985-1987, and he is a member of AMS, MAA and Phi Beta Kappa. He retired in May 1995.

Dave met Maureen at a party at the Hudson's and they were married in December of 1965. They have two children, Simon who is single, and Holly who is married with a daughter Isabella. Until 2 ½ years ago Maureen worked at Stonehenge nursing home. Because of her mother's last illness, Maureen spent 1 ½ to 2 years in Scotland taking care of her mother, who died in January 2001, and Dave flew over several times to see her. Last year Maureen and Dave went out west to see national parks, last fall they went to China for 2 ½ weeks, and they take frequent trips to Scotland to see Maureen's relatives.

Sources: His cv dated January 1990; and phone conversations with Dave 6/4/02 & 6/14/02 Phil Church 6/14/02