Oberdan William Otto was a physicist and a stalwart of the Scottish Country Dancing and Round Dancing communities.
Oberdan grew up in Palo Alto, California and graduated from California Institute of Technology in 1969 and from Stanford University in 1973, where he earned a PhD in Applied Physics. For most of his career he developed software of various sorts. He holds a number of patents in the area of Fast Pattern Matching. His final job at Mentor Graphics was making software that assists in the design of integrated circuits. He commuted to Oregon for many years, and had a circle of friends and dance students there.
