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“Never let death interfere with life,” Professor Michael Martin always said.

His colleagues agreed that Martin certainly did not let this happen to him. Family and friends who knew him well knew that he led a full life of 61 years.

He died doing what he enjoyed most: hiking. His body was found in a pool of water in the San Rafael riverbed in south central Utah on Sept. 8. The Emery County Sheriff’s Department in Utah investigated and believes that while climbing a canyon wall, Martin fell.

On Sept. 16 a memorial service was held to celebrate his life.

In 1998, he won a Center for Teaching and Learning grant to develop digital teaching materials for first-year calculus. In 1999, he experimented with his honors calculus course with an online textbook developed by the WebCale Group at Texas A&M. The students no longer leafed through the usual textbooks to work, but only clicked to find the answers, which saved a lot of time.

“It changes the instructor’s role. I don’t do much lecturing-I’m a pacesetter or coach,” Martin said of this experience.

Martin grew up in New York City’s Bronx and was educated at Cornell University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree. He received a master’s degree of science and philosophy degree at the University of Washington.

He was a teaching and research assistant at the University of Washington from 1961 to 1970. He came to DU as a post-doctoral researcher and was hired as a tenure-track-professor in 1971.