Obituary — Sister Stella Mary Toole O.P.

Over twenty years ago I received a surprising letter from an interested reader of Kybernetes. The writer was a member of the community of Dominican Contemplative Nuns at St. Dominic's Priory, Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight (UK). She wrote of her great interest in cybernetics, though a member of the community of nuns since 1933. It appears her interest in cybernetics arose from correspondence with one of her brothers. Her father was an industrialist and a member of the UK Institution of Chemical Engineers, and the young Stella Mary Winder Toole took a keen interest in the welfare of his employees. Her interest in other human beings was no longer confined to the family circle and a few friends; there was, as she put it in the Foreword to an essay “Sabbath for Man”, a new‐found desire to learn “how the other half lives” and a growing sense of one's responsibility towards the less privileged members of the society. This became evident in her contributions to the cybernetics literature.