Our colleague Washek Pfeffer passed away on January 3, 2021, he was 84. Born in Prague as Václav Franticek Pfeffer on November 14, 1936, he changed his name to Washek Pfeffer when he became a US citizen in 1970. He joined the UC Davis Department of Mathematics in 1966, retiring in 1994.
One of Washek’s middle school classmates later rose to prominence, Václav Havel, the famous playwright and President of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). Washek and Václav became close friends in the 1950s.
