The London Times of Monday April 11th announces the sad news that Professor Douglas Geoffrey Northcott FRS, who was Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Sheffield from 1952 until his retirement in 1982, and whose name is well known to many commutative algebraists, died on Friday April 8th, 2005, aged 88 years. Here is a link to the obituary in the Times. Thanks to Rodney Sharp for passing along this sad news.