Audrey M. Carlan

8.8.1930 – 7.17.2022. Audrey M. Carlan
Audrey Carlan passed away peacefully in her sleep on Sunday July 17, 2022, at the age of 91. She will be missed by everyone who knew her.

Audrey was born on August 8, 1930, in Brooklyn New York to Betty and Francis Michaels.
Audrey shined in school. She loved math. Her proficiency led to school-wide math awards in junior high and high school.

In fact, math was the catalyst for meeting her late husband, Alan, with whom she shared 55 years of marriage until his passing in 2007. Audrey and Alan noticed each other in her first class at Brooklyn College, analytical geometry. Alan turned out to be from her section of Brooklyn. And the rest is history. They married, eventually took jobs at American Optical (AO) Company in Southbridge, Mass., and began taking Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Graduate classes offered at AO.

Audrey and Alan were trailblazers in the newly developing computer science projects pioneered at WPI.
The two were the only students from American Optical who continued classes on campus, so their simultaneous graduation, both with master’s degrees in physics, was especially remarkable
Earning an MS was the beginning of a career in which Audrey paved a path so many working moms face today. Within years, she moved to teaching, in part for the flexibility. She became a professor emeritus of mathematics at Southwest Community College in Los Angeles, and authored Everyday Mathematics for the Numerically Challenged.

Audrey and Alan went on to have two sons and a daughter (first son Steve was born just weeks after that 1957 commencement) and established careers as mathematicians and physicists

Following their move across the country to sunny southern California in 1966, Audrey and Alan took up sailing as a hobby, with their first boat “Frenesi”. They quickly grew to love the Pacific Ocean and became more involved in sailboat racing and cruising, with the purchase of their second sailboat, “Frenesi II.”

Sixty years after Audrey and her late husband, Alan, were part of WPI’s first physics MS Graduate Degree class, she returned to “Worcester Tech.” on May 8, 2017, to receive her honorary PhD for recognition as the first woman master’s degree graduate from the College.

Audrey was preceded in death by her husband, Alan. She is survived by her children Stephen, David (Sylvia), and Sue Reynolds (Michael), and her grandchildren Joshua and Solonia Reynolds.

Graveside services will be held at Green Hills Mortuary, 27501 South Western Ave, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275, at 11:30 am on Thursday July 28, 2022.

Watch: Audrey Carlan '57 — 60 years later a dream is realized
https://youtu.be/w9C80_GnU50