A Man Who Believed in Mankind

R. Buckminster Fuller: 1895-1983

He was an American original, a cranky genius and an ingenious crank. He liked to call himself "an engineer, inventor, mathematician, architect, cartographer, philosopher, poet, cosmologist, comprehensive designer and choreographer." He was also a mystical optimist who believed in the survival of mankind against whatever odds.

Through technology, R. (for Richard) Buckminster Fuller would say, "man can do anything he needs to do." He urged young people to "reform the environment instead of trying to reform man." He argued, in the face of the Malthusian theory of human overpopulation and ultimate self-destruction, that "the entire population of the earth could live compactly on a properly designed Haiti and comfortably on the British Isles." He once declared that "man has the capability through proper planning and use of natural resources to forever feed himself and house himself and live in workless leisure." He dreamed of mile-high floating cities and of a Manhattan enshrouded in a gargantuan plastic dome. But he was more than just a dreamer. When he died of a heart attack last week at 87, while visiting his wife at a Los Angeles hospital, "Bucky" Fuller left behind him, in the real world, thousands of geodesic domes that are used as theaters, auditoriums and defense facilities as well as dwelling places.

The descendant of a distinguished New England family, Fuller was the fifth generation of his family to go to Harvard. He was expelled in 1914 for blowing his tuition and expense money on a spree for the members of a Broadway chorus line. He worked in a Canadian machinery factory, was invited back to Harvard, was expelled for a second time, served in the Navy during World War I and went on to study science at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. During the 1920s he spent five years in an alcoholic depression following the death of a four-year-old daughter. One night in 1927, while standing on the shore of Lake Michigan, he found himself redeemed from his thoughts of self-destruction by a private vision. He told himself, "You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You belong to the universe." Years later he explained, "I made a bargain with myself that I'd discover the principles operative in the universe and turn them over to my fellow men."

Then began his years of high creativity. He designed the Dymaxion House, an easily transported structure with roofs hung from a central mast and with outer walls of glass. He sought to give the design to the American Institute of Architects, which haughtily rejected all such "peas-in-the-pod-like reproducible designs." Years later the institute gave Fuller, who never formally studied architecture, a gold medal for his contributions to the field. In the early 1930s he produced the three-wheeled Dymaxion automobile, which attained 120-m.p.h. speeds using a standard 90-h.p. engine. The car was never manufactured commercially. After that, he invented the Dymaxion map, the first to show continents on a flat surface without distortion.

In 1947, Fuller patented the geodesic dome, which used pyramid-shaped tetrahedrons to attain great strength without internal supports and to cover more space with less material than any other building ever designed. The first commercial sale was to the Ford Motor Co. Other geodesic domes housed DEW-line stations in the Arctic, a concert auditorium in Honolulu and the U.S. Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal.

Most of Fuller's inventions, though influential, did not make him money. But his tireless preaching in favor of "synergetic" methods of seeking solutions to mankind's problems brought him a wide following. During the last two decades of his life he became a favorite of the hippies of the 1960s, the environmentalists of the 1970s and all who chose to believe with him that "we're at the point where humanity has the option to make it."

DIED. Joe Delaney, 24, star halfback of the Kansas City Chiefs; of drowning when he dived into a pond to rescue two floundering boys; in Monroe, La. Smallish for a pro football running back (5 ft. 10 in., 184 Ibs.) but remarkably quick and agile, Delaney rushed for a team record of 1,121 yds. and caught 22 passes as a 1981 rookie. The father of three children, one a newborn baby, he first warned the youngsters not to swim in a construction site's 20-ft.-deep water hole, plunged in after them and, although he knew how to swim, went under almost immediately. Both boys also died.

DIED. Maxie Leroy Anderson, 48, daredevil, eye-patched balloonist who captured the world's delighted attention in 1978 when he and two fellow aeronauts made the first transatlantic crossing in the silvery Double Eagle II; in a balloon crash; in Brueckenau, West Germany. After amassing a mining fortune, Anderson took up ballooning as "a way of entering history." In his final flight, Anderson and frequent Co-Pilot Don Ida, 49, were desperately trying to land before drifting into East Germany when their gondola became detached and the two adventurers plunged 2,000 ft. to their deaths.

DIED. Mary Livingstone, 77, Jack Benny's widow and comedy partner in radio and television; of heart disease; in Los Angeles. Born Sadye Marks, she married Benny in 1927 after he saw her in a May Co. department store. On short notice one night, she assumed the bit role of Corny Poet Mary Livingstone on Benny's radio show, and listener response made her a regular. In 1949 she legally changed her name, claiming, "Even my husband calls me Mary."

DIED. Marion Monroe, 85, child psychologist and co-author of the Dick and Jane schoolbooks, which instructed millions of U.S. children to "see Spot run" and to begin reading; in Long Beach, Calif. Written with the late William Gray and others, Monroe's classic primers were widely used from the 1930s until the early '70s, when educators began to favor a stronger phonics approach instead of the "look-say" learning method and to criticize the series' exclusively white middle-class characters.

DIED. Julius J. Hoffman, 87, U.S. district judge who presided over the tumultuous 1969-70 trial of prominent radicals on criminal charges growing out of the riots at Chicago's 1968 Democratic Convention; in Chicago. Hoffman clashed repeatedly with defense attorneys and their clients, ordering Defendant Bobby Seale bound and gagged in the courtroom. An appeals court overturned the five resulting convictions and criticized Hoffman's "deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude" during the Chicago Seven trial. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.