The New York Times – Science – Cones, Curves, Shells, Towers: He Made Paper Jump to Life:

In contrast to traditional origami, where all folds are straight, Dr. Huffman developed structures based around curved folds, many calling to mind seedpods and seashells. It is as if paper has been imbued with life.

Curved folds have occasionally whispered into my ear of their charms, structural or otherwise. One wonders if Dr. Huffman left web traces amid the paperscraps.

Clearly, he did. Someone at SGI took note (very cool pictures of Huffman at work), and the ACM has a memorial page.

UCSC maintains a ghostly faculty listing as well as an archived news item on the professor’s passing.

Interestingly, a page hosted at Rice takes a look at Huffman’s role in developing early compression algorithms, something that, at least to my analgebraic mind, appears directly related to the paperfolding activity explored in the NYT piece.

Oh, for the plans of these structures!