Tom was a friend and mentor to many in the McMaster community, as well as a highly valued member of our Mathematics for Public Health network. His death has left everyone who knew him reeling, not just for the loss to Canadian mathematics, but for the loss of a warm, brilliant, passionate, engaged and supportive human being. 

Our thoughts are with his colleagues, students, friends and family today, particularly his wife, Rita Bertoldi, his daughter, Emilia Hurd, his son-in-law, Kevin Cooper, his newborn grandson and his siblings. 

Tom completed his undergraduate work at Queen’s, then headed to Oxford to do his D.Phil at Trinity College with Roger Penrose. While at Oxford, Tom was a Junior Research Fellow at University College. 

Following an Assistant Professorship at the University of British Columbia, Tom moved to McMaster in 1988, first working in mathematical physics before switching over to mathematical finance in 2000. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, he was quick to sort out how he could help public health efforts and once again made a switch, this time to mathematical epidemiology.

Tom joined the Mathematics for Public Health network in 2021, where he lent his expertise, leadership and insight to the group’s activities. He was co-lead of a project on ‘Robust Agent-Based and Network Infectious Disease Models,’ that sought to deploy his own network model alongside existing agent-based models with the aim of shortening computation times without trading off on accuracy.

Many of Tom's colleagues have found solace in sharing their memories of him. Here are just a few:

"I was very saddened to hear first about Tom's illness, and then the devastating speed with which it progressed. Tom was always engaging and insightful, and we will all miss him and his contributions to the mathematical scene and to MfPH. Our sincere condolences and prayerful thoughts to his family and his colleagues.” Kumar Murty

“I first met Tom Hurd when he convened the Mathematics for Public Health Team on "Robust Agent Based Modelling" in 2021. Since then, I was most impressed with Tom's open and engaging manner when bringing together researchers from many different backgrounds. He was extremely well prepared, organized and passionate about the scientific issues involved.  Despite the all the difficulties of the pandemic, he managed to actually meet in person with several team members, including an enjoyable session in Fredericton as Tom was travelling home from Nova Scotia. I am shocked and saddened by this news, and certainly this is no small loss for the Canadian mathematics community.” Sanjeev Seahra

"I just met Tom a year ago when I joined his group in the M4PH NSERC project. I was immediately struck by his enthusiasm and curiosity. He had just assumed the lead for the sub-project on agent-based modeling. Our backgrounds were quite different – mine including large-scale applied microsimulation policy models, and his including very sophisticated mathematical modelling. Tom was instantly interested in learning more about a field that was rather new to him. I found him thoughtful and gracious. Our last conversations were about his new postdoc and the course he was to be teaching this coming Fall. It is a real tragedy that we cannot continue to learn from each other and develop new ideas together." Michael Wolfson

Tom's family has published a beautiful tribute, which can be found here. A longer obituary from Tom’s close friend and colleague, Matheus Grasselli, is forthcoming.