Donald P. Hayes, professor emeritus of sociology, dies at 78

Donald P. Hayes, professor emeritus of sociology, died at his Ithaca home Oct. 17. He was 78.

Hayes joined the Cornell sociology department faculty in 1963 and during his 34-year career served as director of the Social Psychology Laboratory, director of undergraduate and graduate studies and also as department chair for seven years.

Hayes also served the university in a variety of ways, including service as secretary of the graduate faculty and as a long-standing member of the Faculty Senate. He was a member of the Undergraduate Admissions Committee for the College of Arts and Sciences for 20 years and served on the Human Subjects Committee for 25 years.

Hayes retired in 1997 but continued his research as well as his committee work until close to the end of his life.

Hayes was an expert in the area of nonverbal communication, and his early research focused on interactional rhythms and groups in interaction and socio-linguistics. He was a consultant on numerous projects at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Washington and Minnesota and served as a reviewer for a number of scientific journals.

One of Hayes' most notable achievements was the development of LEX, a scientific measure of the lexical difficulty of texts. Using the system to evaluate hundreds of schoolbooks from around the world, Hayes concluded that the simplification of school texts over time was reducing student vocabularies and general knowledge. He also applied the LEX system to articles in general science journals and found them to be increasingly incomprehensible. This research was published in a 1992 Nature article, "The Growing Inaccessibility of Science."

Hayes is survived by his wife, Florence, and his children, grandchildren and other family members. Friends are invited to send reminiscences for a memory book to the Hayes Family at 411 Kinewoods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850. Memorials can be made to Hospicare, 172 East King Road, Ithaca, or to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network at http://www.pancan.org.

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