Don was born on June 29, 1935 in Oakland, California. Following in the footsteps of his older brother Leo, he enrolled in U.C. Berkeley in 1953. He earned a B.S. in Physics in 1958, and, after a stint in the armed forces, a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1970. His thesis advisor was the legendary logician Alfred Tarski. His dissertation concerned the Craig interpolation theorem, but in many ways, the most important contribution he made as a graduate student was the extensive editing he did on the monograph Cylindric Algebras,” by Henkin, Monk, and Tarski. Dr. Pigozzi spent two years as an assistant professor in Bloomington, Indiana, before accepting a position at Iowa State in 1971, which he held until his retirement in 2002. During his years in Ames, his reputation as the foremost developer of modern Algebraic Logic grew. Don entertained a series of visitors from around the world who all found him to be a gracious host and energetic collaborator. Together with his colleagues Cliff Bergman, Peter Ladkin and Roger Maddux, he organized a meeting on Algebraic Logic and Universal Algebra in Computer Science in 1988. This ground-breaking meeting led to an ongoing series of conferences now called RAMiCS. The 19th edition of the conference just concluded in Marseille, France this month. In addition to his duties in Ames, Don traveled the world to collaborate with researchers in Algebraic Logic. His many ports of call included Manitoba, Chicago, Barcelona, Krakow, Budapest, Siena, Lisbon, Yerevan and Santiago. A look at the explosion in research on Algebraic Logic gives an idea of the enormous influence that his foundational work on the subject has had.
Don prepared an extensive account of his life and career in mathematics, which you can see here.Don is survived by his wife Judy Casey, whom he married (at age 65) in 2000. After retiring from ISU, they moved to Don’s childhood home in the Oakland hills.