Oscar Mandel, author, playwright, and professor of literature, emeritus, at Caltech, passed away on May 20, 2026. He was 99 years old. Mandel was born on August 24, 1926, in Antwerp, Belgium, to a German-speaking Polish Jewish family and educated in French schools until the Nazis invaded Belgium in May 1940. His family fled to New York City when he was 14 and lived in Forest Hills, Queens, where he learned English. Mandel earned a bachelor's degree in 1947 from New York University, a master's degree from Columbia University in 1948, and a doctorate from Ohio State University in 1951. In 1953, Mandel was conscripted into mandatory service in the US Army and served for two years, then later spent five years on the faculty at the University of Nebraska, during which he spent time in Amsterdam as a Fulbright Fellow. He married his wife, Adrienne, in 1960. Mandel first came to Caltech as a visiting associate professor of English in 1961.…