Jay Rosenberg was all of those, a devoted and demanding philosophy professor whose breadth of knowledge landed him on "Jeopardy" more than once.

Rosenberg died a few months ago of esophageal cancer. He was 65.

Rosenberg was born in Chicago in 1942 and grew up in the suburbs. He was bookish even as a child. When he shunned sports, his worried parents enrolled him in a baseball summer camp.

Instead of playing, he would plop beneath a tree and read. "Why should I get worked up and sweaty when I can sit in the shade and read a good book?" he asked his parents.

They gave up.

Strong in math and science, Rosenberg planned to become a mathematician and physicist. At the last minute, he decided to switch to humanities. On an uncle's advice, he applied to Reed College in Oregon, where he encountered philosophy.

At college, good food was one of his passions. Anyone who has supped in a university dining hall knows good food is not often on the menu.

Rosenberg began cooking for himself and eventually for fellow students. They would ask him for recipes so often that he assembled a cookbook and called it "The Impoverished Students' Guide to Cookery, Drinkery and Housekeepery." Now in its third edition, it is still available at Reed College. Rosenberg donated the proceeds to his alma mater.

At Reed, he took up international folk dancing. It was a pursuit that stayed with him when he began teaching at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1963. His specialty was Serbian, Croatian and Balkan dances.

Rosenberg could be very loud -- his wife said his voice reverberated through a large lecture hall without a microphone -- and some students were intimidated by him. Wearing his trademark beaded necklaces or ethnic medallions, he delivered meticulously constructed lectures and became known as a demanding professor.

When his daughter, Leslie Thompson, was a girl, she would sit in the back of the room as Rosenberg, a single dad at the time, taught Introduction to Philosophy.

"We were always together, but most of our time together was like independent study," she said. "If I said, 'Let's go outside and play,' he'd say, 'Read a book.' So I ended up reading lots of books."

In 1979 when he pursued a fellowship in Germany, they hopscotched across Europe in their Volkswagen Rabbit, visiting 20 countries, guided by the spirit of "Europe on $5 a Day."

An impatient guy, Rosenberg could not abide laziness.

"If something didn't make sense, he had a hard time tolerating it," said his second wife, Regina Rosenberg, whom he met in Germany.

That didn't mean he was always erudite in his pursuits. His sense of humor, for example, was hardly highbrow.

Once, a graduate student dropped off a paper at his home to find the esteemed professor cackling as he watched professional wrestling antics on television.

On his Web page, www.unc. edu/%7Ejfr/, Rosenberg cites his "philosophical mentor," Wilfrid Sellars, who pursued a career as a "reflective generalist."

What does that mean?

Sellars once wrote that "the aim of philosophy is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term."

That sentiment resonated with Rosenberg, who prided himself on the breadth of his interests. "Plato didn't have an area of specialization," he would say in his booming voice.

As interested as he was in the matters of the mind, he was equally interested in his funny bone. On the same Web site where he touted Sellars' beliefs, he shared some bovine haikus he had penned.

Every cow comes wrapped

in cowhide, but that does not

serve to hide the cow.

The colors of cows

range from brown to black and white.

Purple ones are rare.

Cows are a largely

neglected theme for haikus.

It's hard to see why.

"He worked hard to do all sorts of different things," said Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, chairman of UNC's philosophy department. "There was almost nothing he didn't know."

That's why in 1985, Rosenberg's wife nudged him to audition for "Jeopardy," which was holding a casting call at the Hotel Europa in Chapel Hill.

Rosenberg's memory astounded. He remembered complex things, such as Emmanuel Kant's teachings, and more mundane information too. In Oslo, in Paris, wherever the Rosenbergs traveled, he could study a map of the city for 10 minutes, stash it in the glove compartment and drive around without ever checking it again.

He won five times on "Jeopardy," almost $50,000. After taxes, it wasn't much of a windfall, but he was philosophical about that, too: At least it helped pay for the kids' college educations.

Jay Rosenberg is survived by his wife, Regina, two children and one grandchild.

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