By Gal Tziperman Lotan, News Staff

When Jonathan Mark attended Northeastern in the early 1970s, he would visit his father, Dr. Melvin Mark’s, office in the College of Engineering on a daily basis.
‘He was very funny,’ said Jonathan Mark, who graduated Northeastern with a civil engineering degree in 1975. ‘I remember my friend went to some engineering club where my father was speaking, and he said everybody was laughing.’
Dr. Mark, a former Northeastern provost and senior vice president for academic affairs as well as College of Engineering dean, died Oct. 27. He was 86 and living in Newton. Dr. Mark worked for the university for 21 years and retired in 1984.
‘He was a first-rate professor and researcher, although he was modest,’ Jonathan Mark said.
Northeastern was a family affair for the Mark family, Jonathan Mark said:’ Dr. Mark’s wife of 55 years, the late Elizabeth Wyner Mark, who died of cancer in December 2006, received a Master’s in psychology from Northeastern. The couple had three sons, two of which graduated Northeastern with civil engineering degrees:’ Jonathan in 1975 and David in 1979.
After graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1943 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, Dr. Mark researched heat transfer as applied to electronic systems at Harvard University, where he earned a Doctor of Science (Sc. D) degree in 1950. He was dean of faculty at the Lowell Technological Institute, now the University of Massachusetts ‘- Lowell.
He joined Northeastern as a professor of mechanical engineering in 1963, rising to dean of the College of Engineering in 1968, five years after joining the faculty.
He served as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs from 1979 until his retirement in 1984.
Though Dr. Mark himself did not use computers often, his son said he was instrumental in developing Northeastern’s computer science program.
‘He was quite computer-illiterate, even when he retired and had free time,’ Jonathan Mark said. ‘But he knew computers were a very important field, so he took the impetus to develop it ‘hellip; He took the real lead in that. Among many decisions that many people made, it really put Northeastern in the fore.’
Dr. Mark published a textbook, simply titled ‘Thermodynamics,’ in 1967. The book was translated into Spanish and Italian, though Dr. Mark did not require his students to buy is it, Jonathan Mark said.
‘Dr. Mark contributed greatly to shaping Northeastern University as we know it today,’ President Joseph Aoun said in a statement to university staff members. ‘He increased faculty research and scholarship in the College of Engineering and separated the physics and math departments from the College of Engineering, placing them in the College of Arts and Sciences.’
Dr. Mark leaves three sons, Jonathan, David and Peter; and six grandchildren.