Dr. Richard "Dick" Osborne

Dr. Richard (Dick) Paul Osborne, 86, Ft. Collins, died on Monday August 7, 2023 from complications due to melanoma. Dick was born on July 2nd 1937 to Anne and Paul Osborne in Pittsburgh PA. The family moved to Fort Morgan, Colorado when Dick was very young and he graduated from Ft Morgan high school. He then attended and graduated from the University of Colorado with an undergraduate degree in mathematics. While there he met and married his first wife, Carol Martin, and together they attended graduate school at Michigan State University. Dick finished his Ph.D. in mathematics at MSU in 1964, specializing in knot theory, and took his first faculty position at the University of Idaho, in Moscow. He was a professor of mathematics at Colorado State University in Ft Collins from 1969 to 2002. Dick is survived by his wife Margerie Boehner, his brother Jim Osborne, and his three children Kendra Bridges, Eric Osborne, and Timothy Osborne. His older sister, Louann White, died in 2015. Dick and his first wife divorced in 1986 after 25 years together, and he met Majorie Jean Boehner early in 1993; by August of 1993 they had married. Marge had two young children, April Griffith, who was at the that time 16, and Joeseph Griffith, who was 13. Dick’s three biological children were in college (or older) and Dick and Marge raised April and Joseph together in Ft Collins. Dick was an avid cyclist, gardener, hiker, backpacker, skier, and very much a do-it-yourselfer. He used his bicycle as his preferred means of transportation whenever possible. Much of his life he had a greenhouse, in which he grew vegetables and house plants. In his first home in Ft Collins on Elizabeth Street, he had a large garden in the yard. He enjoyed hiking through the Canyonlands in Utah with family and friends. He also enjoyed traveling and experiencing other cultures. He spent a sabbatical year in Switzerland with his family, a year in Hawaii and a year in New Jersey as a research mathematician. Dick climbed mountains in many places, e.g. Colorado of course, the Indian Himalaya, the Andes, and Africa (Mt Kilimanjaro). He did extensive bicycle trips with Majorie in Canada, France, Italy, and Costa Rica. He also enjoyed mountain biking in Colorado and Utah. Dick was a staunch liberal; he volunteered for many democratic campaigns over the years, at the local, state, and national levels. He believed in abortion rights, prison reform, and civil rights. He protested the Vietnam war as a young man. Dick was a supporter of a person’s right to die, and when he became very weak from cancer, he used Colorado’s Medical Aid in Dying Law to end his suffering. He regularly supported the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, National Public Radio, Planned Parenthood, among other causes. The family requests that if anyone would like to honor Dick, please donate to one of these causes.