Ida Russakoff Hoos, 94; founded immigrant workers service

In 1938, five years after graduating from Radcliffe College, Ida Russakoff Hoos founded the Jewish Vocational Service, which helped young women, particularly Jewish women who faced discrimination , get job training and have a better chance of finding work.

"Dr. Hoos left quite a legacy," said Jerry Rubin, the JVS president, noting that the agency, which had initially worked with immigrants from Europe, now provides educational training to immigrants from all over the world and serves about 14,000 clients a year.

Dr. Hoos's work with JVS was the beginning of her lifelong mission to make people matter in the onward march of technology and automation that can render workers obsolete.

A sociologist, social psychologist, and social scientist, Dr. Hoos died April 24 at Massachusetts General Hospital of complications from pneumonia. She was 94.

She had been living in Brookline since returning in 1990 from California, where she earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

In an article on the UC Berkeley sociology website, Dr. Hoos, known for her sense of humor, quoted her sister as saying that her thesis, "Automation in the Office," would have attracted more attention if she had called it "Sex and Automation."

She taught at UC Berkeley, where her husband, Dr. Sidney S. Hoos, taught economics, and she was a mentor to many women.

"Ida was a role model for many of us," said Dr. Lynn Goldman, a professor at Johns Hopkins's school of public health. "Ida was an early feminist and way ahead of her time.

"She was a wonderful speaker with a wonderful command of the English language," she said. "Even when she was critical [of other scientists' viewpoints], Ida would have them laughing."

Dr. Hoos was a petite woman with a giant's clout, friends said.

Lou Feldner, who formerly worked for the Federal Communications Commission and met Dr. Hoos at committee meetings, said, "Ida always spoke her mind, but was deft in the way she expressed herself."

Feldner called her writing on automation in the office "a pioneering piece of work."

Dr. Hoos became known for her criticism of systems analysis, in which the emphasis in analyzing complex systems, such as a city's infrastructure, is on figures rather than their effect on society.

Joseph Coates of Washington, D.C., a self-described futurist, said Dr. Hoos was able to look at the mathematics in a systems analysis with "a great knack for identifying work that was sloppy, that claimed too much ."

While at UC Berkeley, Dr. Hoos was a research sociologist at its Institute of Industrial Relations, and then joined the staff of its Space Sciences Laboratory.

"She was the lone social scientist in this group concerned with the uses of information being brought back by satellites, including issues of privacy," said her daughter, Judith Hoos Fox of Jamaica Plain.

She said her mother was also concerned with the transportation and disposal of nuclear waste and the location of nuclear plants, issues she worked on as a consultant to the Division of Policy Research and Analysis of the National Science Foundation Directorate for Scientific, Technology, and International Affairs.

In addition, she served as a consultant on the California Energy Commission and was a member of the Space and Terrestrial Applications Advisory Committee and of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Advisory Committee, "the first woman to hold many of these positions," her daughter said.

But Dr. Hoos was not all scientist, said her other daughter, Phyllis Daniels of Goldendale, Wash., recalling how she used to bake cookies for their class and "was always there when we came home from school at night."

She "loved opera and hated to iron," Fox wrote in statement .

Born in Skowhegan, Maine, to Russian immigrants, Susman and Manya Russakoff, Dr. Hoos had six siblings. Their father was a watchmaker.

The family moved to the Boston area in 1925, and young Ida graduated from Dorchester High School for Girls.

"She was disappointed to have to attend Radcliffe College," wrote Fox in a statement about her mother, "rather than taking the more costly and glamorous route of going away to college."

After her classes, she went to work at R.H. White, a downtown department store, "while her classmates were attending tea dances at the Ritz," Fox wrote. Dr. Hoos graduated from Radcliffe magna cum laude in 1933.

Later, while Dr. Hoos was running the JVS, she earned a master's degree at Harvard in sociology and social psychology. She married Sidney Hoos in 1942. He died in 1979, and Dr. Hoos retired three years later.

In later years she became close to her youngest brother, Philip Russakoff of Skowhegan, Maine, and they traveled to Europe together.

Dr. Hoos lived on her own in Brookline until she was 92, he said, and as long as her health held out, she would take the bus to Portland, where he and his wife would pick her up and take her to Skowhegan. There, they would have a "movie orgy" for several days, often viewing her favorites, including "My Favorite Year," "Being There," and "Some Like it Hot."

"She was a pistol," he said.

In addition to her two daughters and brother, Dr. Hoos leaves three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

A service will be held at 1 p.m. May 18 in Gracelawn Memorial Park in Auburn, Maine.