Sebastian S. Koh

Born in Jiangsu Province, China, his family fled Nanjing before the massacre and endured the bombings in Chongqing. After the war, he managed to secure passage aboard one of the last ships to Taiwan before the ports were closed by the advancing Red Army. There, he attended Taiwan University. He came to the United States in 1958 to study mathematics at Wayne State University in Detroit and earned his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1961, he married Mireille, and they began their family together, moving from California to St. Louis where Sebastian was an Assistant Professor at Washington University. The family eventually settled in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, where Sebastian was a professor of mathematics for 30 years at West Chester University, later serving as department chair.

Sebastian was a lifelong learner who approached his many pursuits with scholarly focus, and though a mathematician, he always had a passion for horticulture and the arts. He received much gratification from reading, learning, and doing things himself. He pursued and studied plant propagation, photography, violin acoustics, playing the cello, pottery, painting, and in his later years, art history and the perception of perspective in art, surrounding himself with books and filling notebooks with his gained knowledge. He gave several lectures on art during his retirement.

Sebastian and Mireille shared a love for the outdoors, gardening and art. Together, they valued connections with old friends, visits with their children and grandchildren, and even spending a year together in Fukuoka, Japan, while Sebastian taught there. Sebastian brought a lighthearted humor and a genuine interest to every conversation. He is survived by his four children, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the family invites you to plant a tree of your own in his memory or donate a memorial tree through the Arbor Day Foundation (arborday.org/treesinmemory).