Memorial for UCI Professor Isabel Birnbaum

UC Irvine psychology professor Isabel M. Birnbaum, a founding faculty member who was perennially popular with students, will be honored today in a campus memorial service, UCI officials said Tuesday.

Birnbaum, 54, died Saturday after a lengthy battle with multiple sclerosis.

Even though she was confined to an electric wheelchair and had to move to a nursing home nine months ago for the constant care her condition required, Birnbaum continued to come to campus one day a week to teach classes in experimental psychology.

“She was teaching a week ago and her students loved her,” said William R. Schonfeld, dean of UCI’s School of Social Sciences. “She exuded a kind of enthusiasm that was most extraordinary. . . . The memory people will have of her is of being an exemplar of courage and dignity in the face of the most serious and debilitating forms of physical adversity.”

Added UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason: “She was here at the very beginning and she helped to build the program (in psychology). She was also devoted to work on this campus.”

Birnbaum was a nationally regarded expert on memory and learning, and particularly the effects of alcohol on memory, and was the author of numerous journal articles. She received her doctorate in psychology from UC Berkeley in 1964, and before that was a 1958 winner of the prestigious Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship.

Birnbaum is survived by her brother, Ira Birnbaum of New York City.

The memorial service will be at 11 a.m. in Room 220 of the Social Science Tower at UCI.

In lieu of flowers, relatives asked that contributions be sent to the Isabel M. Birnbaum Memorial Fund in care of the School of Social Sciences, UC Irvine, Irvine, Calif. 92717.