"Hal was my advisor and was wonderfully supportive. He made a great difference to people in many ways. -Roger Wojtkiewicz, Ball State University, Muncie, IN"
In loving memory of
Halliman Winsborough
April 13, 1932 - September 5, 2018
MADISON- Halliman Herrin Winsborough, of Madison, passed away on September 5th, at the age of 86. He was born to Halliman Pryor Winsborough and Jean Herrin Winsborough on April 13, 1932, in St Louis, Missouri.
Hal was the Emma Welsch Conway-Bascom Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught and conducted research for 33 years. He was also named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. After earning his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1960, Hal taught at Ohio State University and Duke University before coming to UW-Madison in 1967. In 2000, he served as the Interim Director of the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan - the major social science data archive in the U.S.
Hal was an exceptional academic innovator. He developed the world-renown Center for Demography and Ecology at the UW-Madison as a resource-sharing cooperative. He recruited exceptional faculty and students, created valuable data resources - including the first micro-data samples from the 1940 and 1950 U.S. Censuses - and was a pioneer in user-friendly, state-of-the art academic computing. Hal's entrepreneurship and generosity created resources for research and teaching throughout the social scientific community.
Known for his thoughtfulness, wise guidance, quiet wit and great patience - as well as his enthusiasm and skill in the kitchen - Hal will be greatly missed by colleagues, friends and family.
Hal is survived by his wife of 62 years, Shirley Hale Winsborough, and his son Edward Hale "Ned" Winsborough. He was preceded in death in 2011 by his elder son, William Hale Winsborough.
A remembrance gathering is planned for Saturday, Sept. 22, 2018, at 2:00 pm, at Capitol Lakes, 333 W Main St, Madison, WI 53703.
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to UW-Madison, College of Letters & Science.
Cress Funeral and Cremation Service
3610 Speedway Rd, Madison
608-238-3434
Tributes
"Doctoral programs can be an alienating, especially for a first-generation college student like me. Hal was kind to me, proffered my qualifying exams in demography, and served on my dissertation committee. It's been decades since we spoke, but I am grateful for his help ushering me into a career in the academy. I send my condolences to his family. -- Vilna Bashi Treitler, University of California, Santa Barbara"
"I wish to express my sympathies to the family of Hal Winsborough on his death earlier this month. Although I was never his colleague nor his student, I admired him greatly. I first met Hal in the early 1970s, when he and I and Frank Bean published a research article in the Social Science Quarterly on the urban hierarchy. I was then a brand new assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and this was one of my first publications. I was so very pleased to get it published and very happy and honored that it was published with Hal. Hal had been a coauthor with Otis Dudley Duncan and others of Metropolis and Region, an extremely important book published back in 1960, on urban ecology and the metro hierarchy. For a young assistant professor in the 1970s (me) to have an article published with a coauthor of the luminary Metropolis and Region was a really big deal. Hal and I maintained a pleasant relationship over the decades. I?ve not seen or talked to Hal for many years, but our exchanges at different venues in the past were always very pleasant and friendly. I send my most sincere sympathies to his family. Hal was a very nice and gracious person. -- Dudley Poston, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas"