University Times

Anthony Debons, who retired in 1986 as professor emeritus in the School of Information Sciences, died Oct. 19, 2013.

He was born in Malta on April 16, 1916.

He earned a B.S. in psychology and sociology from Brooklyn College in 1948 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in psychology from Columbia University in 1952 and 1954, respectively.

He was an expert in psychology, engineering and the social significance of computers.

As an experimental psychologist specializing in human information processing, he assisted the U.S. Air Force in its development of command and control systems in the 1950s and 1960s. He retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1964.

He joined Pitt’s information sciences school in 1970, where he was professor and vice chair of the Interdisciplinary Department of Information Science, 1968-86. During that time he was also a NATO adviser, honorary consul to the Republic of Malta and chaired the board of the Research Institute for Information Science and Engineering.

According to the school’s online Hall of Fame, Debons created an information-counseling service for graduate students, training them to use their research for real-world applications.

His principal research interests were the measurement of information and knowledge; the organization of information and knowledge for creativity, and theories and principles for the analysis and design of information/knowledge systems.

In 2008, he published the book “Information Science 101.”

Michael B. Spring, faculty member in information science and telecommunications, noted: “Professor Debons had a long and distinguished career… Well into his late 80s, Tony was teaching and writing and working with students and faculty in the school.

“The son of a bird colonel myself, I affectionately referred to Col. Debons as the Maltese Falcon. I had the honor of working with him in several courses. His contributions to the field are numerous, but I will remember him most for his passion. I can still hear his deep, rumbling voice as he proclaimed the devastation of another information system failure, be it the Challenger tragedy or the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island.

“He had an uncanny ability to cut to the chase and see where the lines of communication or information processing were broken.”

Debons was married to the late Margaret Kenneally Debons and is survived by a daughter, Janet Waddel, her husband John, and their children Christina and Megan; a son Eugene, his wife Cindi and their daughter Amanda, and siblings Albert, Robert, Joseph, Edward and Dolores Rigano.

—Marty Levine