George Dekker, professor emeritus of humanities, and James Porterfield MBA ’48 Ph.D. ’48, professor emeritus of finance in the Graduate School of Business (GSB), died this month, according to the Stanford Report.

Dekker was the Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities, Emeritus. He worked primarily on Romantic and early modern British and American literature, was active in both the Academic Council and the Faculty Senate and was the associate dean of graduate policy in the 1990s. A firefighter when he was a teen, Dekker was born in California, and educated in the United States and Great Britain. He taught on both sides of the Atlantic.

Dekker, who died on Feb. 25 of complications from open-heart surgery, was 75. He leaves behind his wife, Linda Jo Bartholomew, four daughters from a previous marriage and seven grandchildren.

Porterfield, the James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance, Emeritus, in the GSB, was born in Maryland and served in the Navy during World War II. He studied at Stanford after the war, entered the private sector and first began teaching at the University of Washington. He returned to Stanford in 1959.

Porterfield, who died Feb. 28 from pneumonia, was 89. He leaves behind his second wife, Patricia Gardiner Roggeveen, three stepchildren, five grandchildren, a niece and a nephew.

— Eric Messinger