DR. ROBERT RIEGEL Leaves UB This Month (newspaper printed image enhanced by AI)
Dr. Robert Riegel of 50 W. Cleveland Dr. can remember when the University of Buffalo’s professor of statistics and insurance also was the varsity tennis coach.
It was 1931 — and Dr. Riegel was the man doing both jobs.
“I was just an amateur at tennis,” he said today. “But the tennis idea had been instilled in some of the boys and I was glad to help out the first formal college team.”
A short, wiry man had his 70th birthday in January, he will retire from the UB faculty this month.
Dr. Riegel left a full professorship at the University of Pennsylvania to come to Buffalo in 1929, attracted by “a freer field in which to work.”
Directed Research Bureau
“The University of Pennsylvania was very old, and in an old institution leadership very often is pre-empted by older people,” he explained. “It can be the bane of a young man’s existence.”
Business education was new at UB. Besides teaching, Dr. Riegel was director of the university’s new Bureau of Business & Social Research, a community service operated until 1942.
The bureau published studies by faculty members of local industry and retail trade and prepared what the director believes was “the first and only” monthly local business index for any city in the nation.
Not Enough Pride
Dr. Riegel is glad he came to Buffalo and will remain a Buffalonian in retirement. But as a native of Philadelphia and a graduate and former faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania, he says:
“Buffalo does not have enough pride in its own university. Philadelphians think the University of Pennsylvania is the best college there is anywhere.
“Buffalo people are more inclined to think people who come from far away are better, even if they are not as good as some who have grown up right at home.”
Despite his special attention to statistics and insurance, Dr. Riegel says his work in these fields didn’t start because he was interested in them.
Led Insurance Teachers
He explains: “I have a belief, you don’t work at a thing because you’re interested in it. You get interested because you work at it. People who think a subject is dry just haven’t studied it enough to know what it’s all about.”
In his case, college insurance courses led to work in the actuarial side. This, in turn, took him into the field of statistics. His study constantly stimulated interest, resulting in Dr. Riegel’s authorship of text books in both fields.
He is past president of the American Association of University Teachers of Insurance and of the University of Buffalo Chapter, American Association of University Professors. He is a fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society.
Continue as Consultant
Although Dr. Riegel’s tennis coaching career was brief, he “retired” from the game “only four or five years ago,” acknowledging “a little shortness of breath.” He was a frequent opponent of the late Dr. Samuel P. Capen, long-time UB chancellor, who played tennis when well into his 60s.
Dr. Riegel intends to keep up to date. He’s leaving the classroom but will continue as consultant to the university on insurance, “where needs are always changing.”
One of his first assignments is in an entirely new field: Recommending insurance coverage for UB’s atomic reactor.
