Patricia Noyes

Patricia (Pat) Harris Noyes Patricia Jean Feldman Harris Noyes died of age related causes on January 15, 2010 at RiverBend. A Celebration of Life is planned at 3:00 p.m., on Saturday, February 13 in the White Oak Pavilion at Mount Pisgah Arboretum. She was born September 2, 1921 in Seattle, Washington to Earl and Margarethe Feldman. Her parents and a brother, Roger Feldman, predeceased her. Early in life she married and divorced but retained the name Patricia J. Harris as her professional name throughout her life. In 1974 she married Professor Richard M. Noyes in Eugene. He died in 1997. After being present during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, she ran a photography shop and then worked as a metallurgist for the Navy. At the end of the war she began studying physics at Berkeley, but prejudice against women in that field forced her to quit. Pat then graduated in the second class in the Department of Photography at the California School of Fine Arts where she studied under Ansel Adams, Minor White, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston. There was a recent one-woman exhibition of her photographic art in Paris, France and her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She then became a well-published early expert on electron microscopy by chance, while working in another Navy laboratory. Later she earned a BA from Berkeley in 1954, an MA from Yale in 1958, and then a PhD from Berkeley under Professor Daniel Mazia in 1962, all in the field of zoology. From 1964 to 1974 she was a faculty member at Oregon State University in Zoology, and then at the University of Oregon in Biology from 1974 through her retirement in 1989. She was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Electron Microscopy Society of America, the American Society of Zoologists, and the American Society of Cell Biology, and was active in the Sierra Club with local wilderness and conservation issues. Her two sabbatical leaves in Germany resulted in a love of train travel. This led to an interest in tiny N-scale model trains. Thus she was also a member of the local Atlantic & Pacific Engineers, the Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates and the National Organization of Rail Passengers. Pat was a philanthropist endowing the Richard M. and Patricia H. Noyes Professorship in Chemistry at the University of Oregon (held now by Geraldine Richmond), and a scholarship at her high school to encourage young women to pursue careers in science. She also was the naming donor for the White Oak Pavilion at Mount Pisgah Arboretum and supported other musical and political causes. Pat is survived by nieces Heather Komulaine, Kate Nelson and nephew David Noyes. Contributions in her memory to Mount Pisgah Arboretum, Chamber Music @ Beall, the Sierra Club or AORTA are suggested.Please sign the guest book at www.registerguard.com/legacyPhillip Hyde. Pat Harris at Point Lobos, 1948.