AFOSR Program Manager, Quantum Electronic Solids

Dr. Harold Weinstock, was a retired program officer at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), managing programs in electronics and electronic materials that relate to superconductivity, metamaterials and nanoelectronics. Harold died January 3, 2024, in his home at Greenspring Village, VA, with his wife Linda by his side.

Harold received a BA from Temple University in 1956 and a PhD in Physics from Cornell University in 1962. In 1999 he was awarded an honorary doctorate (DHC) from INSA de Lyon, France. From 1962 to 1965 he was an Assistant Professor of Physics at Michigan State University. He moved to the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) as an Associate Professor of Physics 1965, advancing to Professor in 1973. In 1979 he became Founding Director of its Educational Technology Center.

Harold carried out part-time research from 2000 to 2006 at the University of Maryland on the application of superconducting (SQUID) magnetometry to nondestructive evaluation, a field he initiated during a sabbatical at the Naval Research Laboratory in 1982-1983. Other leaves have been as a Visiting Professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium in 1970; the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands in 1972-1973; INSA de Lyon, France in 1993 and 1995; and the University of Houston as Distinguished Welch Professor in 1997-98. In Sep-Oct 2002 he was a Guest Professor at the University of Paris VI, Pierre et Marie Curie, to help establish a research program in SQUID nondestructive evaluation. From 1972 to 1986 he was a part-time Visiting Staff Member at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he engaged primarily in research on current-carrying superconductors. He is the author or co-author of over 100 articles on scientific research or educational development and an editor or co-editor of 11 books, mostly on superconductivity.

Harold was a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 1975 and was a Board Member of the Applied Superconductivity Conference (ASC) from 1990 to 2004. He served as Board Chair (1998-2000) and directed the ASC in September 2000 at Virginia Beach, VA, with an attendance of over 1,600 registrants. He also took primary responsibility for the editing of the proceedings of the ASC 2000, which appeared as almost 4,000 pages in the March 2001 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity. He has been Director or Co-Director of 8 NATO Advanced Study Institutes (1976 to 1999) in Belgium, France, Norway, the US (2) and Italy (3) and co-directed a NATO Workshop on Advanced Magnetic Materials in Marathon, Greece in June 2000. Other NATO activity includes serving as the lead US delegate on 2 NATO Defense Research Group Long-Term Scientific Studies on High-Temperature Superconductivity (1992-1994) and on Electric Pulsed Power Systems (1996-1998). He co-directed and lectured at a 2005 summer school on superconducting electronics in Italy. He served a 4-year term (2000-2004) as a member of the Board of the European Society for Applied Superconductivity, and on the organizing committees of the European Conference on Applied Superconductivity (EUCAS 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007) and a satellite SQUID Workshop (SQUID 2001).

In 2001, Harold was selected as an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Fellow, the highest award given by the Air Force for technical excellence and outstanding contributions to the AFRL R&D program. Having joined the IEEE in 2001, he was elevated to Senior Member status in February 2003 and to Fellow status on January 1, 2007. He twice (1987 and 1996) attended the

Nobel prize ceremony and was an invited speaker at a symposium featuring the two physics Nobel laureates at Chalmers University, Gothenburg organized in connection with the 1987 Nobel prize festivities. He was principal organizer of a 2007 workshop in Norway titled "The Road to Room Temperature Superconductivity" and of two winter schools titled “Beyond Moore’s Law” in Kenting, Taiwan in January 2008 and on Cheju Island, Korea in February 2010.