Dr. Forrest W. Young died one day short of his 66th birthday, on April 9, 2006, in Pittsburgh, PA, of complications from Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, while surrounded by family and friends.
He earned a BA in Psychology from Stanford University in 1962, an MA in Psychology in 1967, and a Ph.D. in Psychometrics from the University of Southern California. He started his professional career at the University of North Carolina, remaining there for the next 39 years. By his retirement in 2001, this Professor Emeritus had taught and encouraged thousands of young people both in and out of the classroom. He and his students, over the course of a ten-year research and development project, created ViSta, a visual statistics system instantiating Dr. Young's theories concerning visual environments for statistical analysis. He also taught in the Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, and Spain as a visiting professor.
 
Although Dr. Young was enamored with Chapel Hill, he indulged in his love of travel with his wife, spending months at a time exploring Idaho, Spain, Australia, Thailand, and many other places, even after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 1996.
 
In 1981, he served as president of the Psychometric Society, and received the American Market Research Association's O'Dell Award. He was a member of the American Statistical Association's sections on Computational and Graphical Statistics. He also acted as a long-term  Computational Statistics Consultant for SAS Institute, Inc., BMDP Statistical Software, Inc., Bell Telephone Laboratories, and  Statistical Services, Inc.
 
In addition to many articles on Computational & Graphical Statistics,  Multi-dimensional scaling and Nonlinear Multivariate Data Analysis,  Dr. Young wrote five books, the last of which, "Visual Statistics:  Seeing Data with Dynamic Interactive Graphics," co-authored by Pedro  Valero-Mora and Michael Friendly, will be published in August and  presented at the American Statistical Association's Joint Statistical  Meetings in Seattle, WA.
 
When not traveling or editing his book, Dr. Young spent his free time writing poetry, enjoying music and artwork, especially that of his son and wife.
 
Donations in memory of Dr. Young may be sent to the Forrest Young Graduate Fund, L.L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3270.  Funds will be used to support activities and training of graduate students in the Psychometric Laboratory.