Mr. Tyler may have been good at mingling with politicians, but he did not look the part. Standing 6-foot-6 and rail thin, he had a nimbus of fluffy white hair that made him resemble “Doc” Brown, the mad scientist from the Back to the Future movies. Mr. Tyler strode around Center City wearing a French military cape, with a corncob pipe nestled in his palm, in the style of an ivory tower academic. He was partial to Swedish tobacco, said his daughter, a professor at the University of York in England.