In Memoriam

Shoji Tanaka of ISTEC Died Suddenly at 84

November 14, 2011. Professor Shoji Tanaka, the preeminent luminary of Japanese superconductivity community suddenly died of pneumonia on November 11, 2011, at the age of 84. The Funeral ceremony was held on November 15th.

The IEEE Council on Superconductivity and European Society for Applied Superconductivity express their sincere condolences to ISTEC and all Japanese colleagues.

Shoji Tanaka was born on September 17, 1927. He obtained his B.S. in Applied Mathematics (1950) and Ph.D. in Engineering (1961) from the University of Tokyo. In 1999 he became honorary D.Sc. degree from the Purdue University, USA. In 1955 he was appointed Lecturer, in 1958 Associate Professor and in 1968 full Professor of the University of Tokyo. Upon his retirement in 1988 he was appointed Professor at the Department of Physics, Tokai University. He was also Consultant Professor of the Shanghai University, China.

Professor Tanaka was best known worldwide for his group’s confirmation of high-temperature superconductivity in cuprate oxides (1986) and the leadership of the International Superconductivity Technology Center (ISTEC). In 1988, he was appointed the first Director General of ISTEC’s Superconductivity Research Laboratory (SRL), which he directed until 2008. In 1988 he also became the Vice President of ISTEC. Currently, he was still Advisor to ISTEC/SRL. In his role, he wielded significant influence in the Japanese science community. We include the last unofficial photograph of him, a snapshot taken on October 24th at the ISS 2011 conference (24th International Symposium on Superconductivity, held at Tower Hall Funabori, Tokyo, October 24 to 26th), not much over two weeks before his passing away.

Shoji Tanaka was author or co-author of about 500 publications, of these over hundred preceding his first involvement with oxide superconductivity (in BaPb1-xBixO3 system) around 1984. His earlier interests concentrated among others on magnetoresistance and galvanomagnetic effects in semiconductors, for example doped Si, CdS, etc. He was also active in various semiconductor device structures, electron transport phenomena, and charge density wave effects in two-dimensional materials. He contributed to ESNF by his reminiscences “The History of ISTEC” (RN18, April 2011).

Professor Tanaka was decorated by the Emperor of Japan with the Purple Ribbon Medal in 1990 and with the 3rd Class Order of Merit of the Rising Sun in 1999. He also received numerous prizes: the Technical Achievement Prize of the World Congress on Superconductors in 1988, and the Greatest Prize of the Japan Ceramics Association, also in 1988. In 2003, the Japan Society of Applied Physics presented to Prof. Tanaka the Outstanding Achievement Award, and in 2004 the IEEE Council on Superconductivity presented to him the IEEE Max Swerdlow Award for Sustained Service to the Applied Superconductivity Community.

We make accessible the official ISTEC obituary received on November 15th.

Clyde Taylor of LLNL and LBNL Passed Away

August 1, 2012 (PO10).  Only now we learned that Clyde Taylor passed away November 16, 2011.  We publish this obituary based on the LBNL remembrance released by the LBNL News Center.

Clyde Taylor, a pioneer of superconducting magnet technology at both Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LLNL and LBNL), died suddenly on November 16, 2011 at the age of 80.

Clyde was born December 5, 1930, in Susanville, CA, and attended Stanford University, where he majored in engineering.  He received his B.S. in 1952 and M.S. in mechanical engineering in 1953.  He then moved to Ventura and became Chief Drilling Engineer for Shell Oil Company’s West Coast Operations.

In 1956 Clyde began his work in superconducting magnets at Lawrence Livermore Lab, rising to become assistant director of the Lab’s magnetic confinement fusion program. He was active in Livermore community affairs and served on planning commissions and the city council, before being elected mayor of Livermore.

Livermore Lab’s fusion program at the time focused on mirror machines, in which plasma was confined by increasing gradients along magnetic field lines. Such machines required superconducting materials that could remain stable at very low temperatures while carrying very high currents and generating high magnetic fields. Livermore’s Jon Zbasnik recalls that, as part of the effort to build the Fusion Engineering Research Facility, and later the Mirror Fusion Test Facility – for which Clyde developed the “yin-yang” magnet configuration – he initiated research on niobium-tin, which is still at the  leading edge of superconducting magnet technology.

Clyde left Livermore in 1981 to join Berkeley Lab as head of the Supercon Group in the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division (AFRD), often working closely with Shlomo Caspi of Berkeley Lab’s Engineering Division. Clyde became head of the multilab engineering team that won the magnet design competition for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), whose planning efforts were based at Berkeley Lab. The SSC was canceled in 1993, but Caspi recalls that Clyde’s engineering skills and talent for management had led DOE to recognize AFRD’s strong position and unique analytical skills in the superconducting magnet field.

Clyde renewed his interest in niobium-tin as essential for advanced magnets when he led AFRD research toward achieving extraordinarily strong magnetic fields, beyond 10 tesla; he designed the first magnet to use windings of the material, according to Ron Scanlan, who in 1994 traded roles with Clyde and became supervisor of AFRD’s magnet group. The niobium-tin magnet they built achieved 13.6T in 1997, still a record. Today, similar magnets play an important role in AFRD’s designs for the planned Large Hadron Collider upgrade. During those years Clyde also put in place a special cabling machine at AFRD, which served as a prototype for industry and continues to supply cable to several DOE labs today.

At this time, as Scanlan recalls, Clyde also developed a solution to a major problem limiting the performance of accelerator magnets: the movement of structural elements under the tremendous forces generated by the magnets themselves, which can lead to disastrous “quenches.” His solution was a system of keys and bladders filled with liquid metal to prestress critical components. Refined by Shlomo Caspi, the bladder and key design made possible a series of record-breaking superconducting magnets built at Berkeley Lab.

Beginning in 1995, Clyde developed the “superbend” insertion devices that allowed the Advanced Light Source, built to optimize soft x-ray production, to extend operations well into the hard x-ray region, a requirement for protein-crystallography beamlines that are among the ALS’s most productive, according to AFRD’s Alan Jackson. Developed in cooperation with an industrial firm, Wang NMR, the Superbends are unique to the ALS among the world’s synchrotron light sources, which now has several of them.

Also in 1995, Clyde applied the bladder and key concept to his design for the superconducting magnet structure of a new kind of ion source for the 88-Inch Cyclotron, proposed by Claude Lyneis of the LBNL Nuclear Science Division. Called VENUS (”versatile ECR ion source for nuclear science”), the new source would be capable of producing high currents of ions, from hydrogen all the way to uranium, but required the highest magnetic fields ever achieved in this kind of ion source. Lyneis notes that the outstanding performance of VENUS, completed in 2003, was a key factor in enabling the rare ion beam facility now under construction at Michigan State University.

Clyde continued to work on both the Superbends and VENUS after his 1996 retirement and subsequent rehire as a consultant, continuing part time at the Lab until 2008. His lifelong enthusiasm for long-distance bicycle trips, backpacking, and cross-country skiing continued, as did his passion for travel abroad and for theater.

Clyde is warmly remembered by his many associates over the years as “a true gentleman” (Alan Jackson); “a very sincere, very kind, and very warm person, with great devotion to his work” (Bert Wang); “my mentor, supervisor, and friend for over 25 years, and one of the best people I have known” (Ron Scanlan); “a gentle person, soft-spoken and a great traveling companion [who] liked people and was eager to help, especially young people at the beginning of their career” (Shlomo Caspi); and many others, including Claude Lyneis, who put together the LBNL remembrance.

Per Dahl Succumbed to Cancer

May 16, 2012 (PO9). Belatedly, we learned that Per Dahl passed away in 2011. Below we reproduce in full the obituary submitted by Peter Wanderer of Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Per Fridtjof Dahl, a physicist expert in superconducting accelerator magnets, artist, and historian of modern physics died on October 1, 2011 after a two-to-three year-long struggle with lung cancer.

Per Dahl was born at Georgetown Hospital in Washington, D.C., on August 1, 1932. His parents were Odd Dahl, from Drammen, Norway, and Anna Augusta (Vesse), from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Dahl was born while his father was working at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. In 1936, his father saw the war coming and decided to take his family back to Bergen, Norway. He returned to Norway in 1937 to oversee science in Norway during the war.

Dahl grew up in Bergen, Norway, from the age of 4 until he was 17. He then came to the U.S. and served three years in the U.S. Army, including two years stationed on Guam in the Pacific. Taking after his father, Dahl was interested in science and physics from an early age. He studied science during his Army years, and after leaving the service he entered the University of Wisconsin, obtaining his Ph.D. in Physics in 1960. His post-doctoral work was done at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Per Dahl joined the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in 1963. He arrived at a time when superconductors were beginning to move from laboratory development to industrial production. At this time, development of accelerator magnets using NbTi and Nb₃Sn began. Per became involved in the design of these magnets early in his BNL career and acquired a good understanding both of the materials and their use in magnets. He put this knowledge to good use later in his BNL career when he became the principal person writing about magnets and superconductors for technically-oriented audiences. This work also provided him with an opportunity to display his skills as an artist. His drawing that shows all the critical components of a superconducting cable is still used in talks for visitors to Brookhaven.

Per began working on the larger stage of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in 1987, where he continued work documenting the magnet program. When the SSC effort moved from the design location, Berkeley, to the laboratory location in Texas, Per expanded his work to include both the documentation of the conventional construction effort and preparation of information in support of the SSC mission (e.g., publisher of the SSC News). Following termination of the SSC project in 1993, Per moved to the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL).

During much of that time he was on leave to the Office of High Energy Physics, where he was Program Officer for a number of university grants. He also consulted with BNL about the nascent RHIC magnet system. He retired from LBNL in 1996 but kept contact with the lab through a visiting scientist appointment and work at the Office for the History of Science and Technology at UC-Berkeley until 2005.

Dahl is the author of numerous scientific papers and several books: From Nuclear Transmutation to Nuclear Fission, 1932-1939 (Institute of Physics Publishing, Co., Bristol, England and Philadelphia, PA, USA, 2002); Heavy Water and the Wartime Race for Nuclear Energy (Institute of Physics Publishing, Co., UK, Bristol England and Philadelphia, PA, USA, 1999), which was featured in the NOVA TV-production, Hitler’s Sunken Secret, DOX Production, London, 2004; Flash of the Cathode Rays: A History of J.J. Thomson’s Electron (Institute of Physics Publishing, Co., UK, Bristol, England and Philadelphia, USA, 1997); Superconductivity: Its Historical Roots and Development from Mercury to the Ceramic Oxides (American Institute of Physics, New York, 1992); Ludvig Colding and the Conservation of Energy Principle: Experimental and Philosophical Contributions, The Sources of Science N. 104 (Johnson Reprint Corp., New York and London, 1972).

Throughout his life, Dahl was able to pursue his love for physics, art and his family. While at Brookhaven, he was a president of the South Bay Art Association (1967-1968), and he was also the president of the Brookhaven National Laboratory Art Society for several years. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society.

He is survived by his devoted wife of 45 years, Eleanor, and two sons: Erik (married to Christa), of Pebble Beach, CA; and Thomas (married to Jo) and two grandchildren, Emily and Alex, of Westford, MA.

Peter Wanderer, Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY
Eleanor Dahl, Emeryville, CA
Erik J. Dahl, Pebble Beach, CA and Thomas F. Dahl, Westford, MA

Ernst-Helmut Brandt Succumbed to Cancer

September 9, 2011 (PO3). On September 1st 2011, Dr. Ernst-Helmut Brandt died peacefully (in his sleep) at home, thus succumbing to an inoperable pancreatic cancer. The vortex community in superconductivity thus lost one of best-known and respected theoreticians.

Ernst-Helmut Brandt was born in Berlin-Kaulsdorf on September 17, 1941, as the second son of the publisher and bookseller Helmut Brandt and Elise Brandt nee Stümpfle. His love of nature and his interest in technical tinkering Ernst Helmut developed already as a child. From October 1961 to June 1967, he studied physics at the University of Stuttgart and the Technical University and the Free University of Berlin (Summer 1966). From June 1967 to June 1969 he finished the doctoral thesis under Professor Alfred Seeger at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research and the University of Stuttgart. From December 1969 to October 1970 he was a visiting scientist at the Lomonosov University in Moscow.

Since then, Ernst Helmut spoke fluently Russian and had many friends in and from the former Soviet Union. In 1970, at the age of only 29, he got a permanent position as researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research, Institute of Physics in Stuttgart. The main area of his work was the theory of vortices in type II superconductors. With over 330 publications including 32 Physical Review Letters, and the total number of  11, 400 citations (1 paper 763 times, another 640 times) and a Hirsch (h) – index of 58 he belonged to the most successful physicists of Germany. He served the community also by supervising numerous doctoral dissertations in many countries, partly in their native language. He had profound knowledge of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Swedish. After retiring in September 2006, he continued his scientific work, was attending scientific meetings and continued publishing.

Ernst Helmut Brandt made a lasting contribution to his field of endeavor and will be remembered as a model of excellent working attitude and highly ethical behavior in research.

(Abbreviated and edited from a draft by Prof.Klaus Morawetz, Münster Univ. of Applied Science)

Igor Yanson Deceased at 73

September 28, 2011 (PO4). On July 25, 2011, Professor Igor Yanson has tragically passed away. Igor was born in Kharkov, Ukraine (USSR) on March 18, 1938. Although he never had a chance to meet his father, who fell victim to the Stalinist regime, due to his mother’s efforts he had graduated with honors from the specialized secondary music school and developed a keen interest in radio-electronics. Sharing these two passions throughout his life, in 1957 joined the Kharkov State University to study radio-electronics, and in 1958 the St. Petersburg (Leningrad) State Conservatory to study piano. Graduating cum laude from the former in 1961, he had pursued his passion for science at the Kharkov Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering, where he worked ever since. Being accustomed to finishing everything he started, in 1963 he also graduated cum laude from the conservatory as a performing pianist.

Upon choosing science as his true calling, already in 1964 he was the first to detect the radiation of the non-stationary Josephson effect in superconductors. For this discovery he received the Ukraine Youth Prize on science and technology in 1967. This work has been mentioned by Brian Josephson in his Nobel Prize lecture in 1973. From that moment and to his last day Igor Yanson remained an internationally renowned scientist, always at the frontier of experimental physics. In 1979 he published a seminal paper on DNA mass spectrometry, and in 1974 he had experimentally discovered a completely new and very powerful method in solid state physics – the Point Contact Spectroscopy (PCS). Together with his colleague Igor Kulik, who provided theoretical support, and others, he has perfected this method to its present state, where it has become an established tool, at hand in every laboratory, for the investigation of the electron-quasiparticle interactions in metals and other conductors at the nanoscale down to one-atom contacts.

For his work, and especially for PCS, he received the Ukraine State Prize in 1980, the EPS Europhysics prize in 1987, the Humboldt Research award in 1996, and the Lisa Meitner Prize in 2008. In 1979 he was elected a corresponding member, and in 1992 he became a full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In his 50 years at the Institute for Low Temperature Physics in Kharkov he had gathered in his department a team of scientists with whom he co-authored five monographs and over two hundred and fifty scientific articles in most renowned journals. They will carry his work further.

Igor Yanson is survived by his wife, four children and five grandchildren, who inherited both his passion for music and for experimental science.

(Authored by Yanson department colleagues with Yanson family approval)

Ray Sarwinski Passed Away in March 2011

August 8, 2012 (PO14).  Raymond Edmund (Ray) Sarwinski was born Jan 11, 1936. He was raised in Peru, Illinois, where he attended the St. Beade Academy (a Catholic high school), of which he was later a benefactor, and the LaSalle College. His academic education included a B.S. in Physics, an M.S. in Physics/Mathematics and Ph.D. in Engineering Physics, all from the University of Illinois. His Ph.D. dissertation was on a NMR method of spin-echo to measure diffusion coefficients. His advisor was John Wheatley who later moved to the University of California at San Diego and also founded S.H.E. Corporation, the first ever SQUID and ultra-low temperature cryogenics (dilution refrigerator) company.

Ray's first employer was the Ohio State University, where he was a Research Associate (1966-1967) and assistant Professor (1967-1972). During the summer of 1970, Wheatley asked Ray to become SHE's first president, but he declined, wanting to keep his faculty position. However, in 1972 he moved to San Diego, CA to join SHE as its Senior Physicist, becoming SHE's Manager of R&D. Ray's work with Georgio Frossati at the Centre de Recherches sur les Très Basses Températures in Grenoble, France led to the development of SHE's 400 and 500 series of dilution refrigerators that achieved temperatures as low as 2.9 mK.

In 1982, Ray became an independent consultant at an impressive number of institutions and companies, including Quantum Design, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, BioMagnetic Technologies, Aerojet General, Physical Dynamics, GWR Instruments, General Atomics, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, R. G. Hansen & Associates, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hughes Aircraft, Maxwell Laboratories, CryoFab Australia, CeramPhysics, Applied Superconetics, Imotron, the University of California at San Francisco's Physics Research Laboratory, Ball Aerospace, Advanced CryoMagnetics, Tristan Technologies, Conductus, Toshiba America Magnetic Imaging, Cryogen, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Alpha Magnetics, International Cryogenics, Primex Physics, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Aerie Partners among others.  Ray founded his own company, the Cryogenic Designs, Inc., of San Diego, of which he was the President and CEO. One of its products was coil-foil which is used in many high performance non-magnetic liquid helium dewars for biomagnetic measurements.  It became also Ray’s consulting base.

During his career, Ray published over 30 refereed scientific publications in the field of low temperature physics and technology, including papers on low temperature properties of matter, superconductivity, NMR, dewars, SQUID instruments, sensors and cryogenic refrigeration. He was also granted 30 patents for his inventions related to the development of diverse devices such as the stabilized point contact toroidal rf SQUID, vapor-shielded metal and non-metal helium dewars, integration of cryocoolers and storage dewars to prolong hold time (including the first 1000 day hold-time liquid helium dewar), ELF SQUID receivers, towable horizontal dewars, ultra-low temperature dilution refrigerators and the variable temperature superconducting susceptometer. Ray's experience included also the development of custom designed cryogenic systems, scientific programming, level detectors, variable temperature ground based satellite coolers and cascade JT refrigerators. He was also involved in design of MRI magnets for both superconducting and permanent magnet coils, active and passive shielded magnet systems, magnet shim coil design and iron placement to produce homogenous fields.

Ray's honors included: 3M Teaching Fellow, Alfred E. Sloan Research Fellow, and Membership on the U.S. National Committee for the International Institute of Refrigeration.

Ray was a special person with many interests. The long list included photography, science fiction, astronomy, magic tricks, guns, board games, poker, orchids, esoteric plants, old cars (Lincoln continental, Mustang), dressing up for certain holidays (Halloween or Comic-Con), model planes and model helicopters, motorcycling, flying, collecting old and diverse things such as angel collections, coins, juke boxes, old autos, collection of buttons, and Star Wars. He loved swap meets and would share his special finds with other collectors. He had a certain "old codger reputation". He bought his last motorcycle about 1 year ago before passing away.

He had also an interest in computers, however, he continued arguing and fighting with them to make them do what he wanted to do regardless of computer limitations. Eventually, he would call for help. But as soon as he would go back to work on it, the same things would happen again.

Ray never had an unkind word to say about anyone. He loved his two sons and his friends. He would do anything to help them and assisted in solving their problems in his own special style. His last months were difficult due to a plethora of health problems. He was prepared for his departure and settled in advance all details of it, including funeral and celebration instructions.  Ray passed away on March 23, 2011.  His ashes were dispersed on the Pacific Ocean from a cryogenic dewar.

(The remembrance above is based on information, documents and photos supplied by Mrs. Marilyn Hauck.  Additional input and/or revisions were provided by: William Black, Robert Fagaly, Eugene Hirschkoff, Douglas Paulson and Ronald Sager.)

Hisashi Kado Succumbed to Cancer

December 27, 2010 (PO1).  Hisashi Kado, a pioneer of modern biomagnetic SQUID instrumentation in Japan passed away on December 22nd, 2010, after a three-year-long battle with cancer. He left behind his wife and three sons.

Hisahi was born on February 7th, 1948 and graduated from the Department of Biophysical Engineering, faculty of Engineering Science at the Osaka University in 1971.  His PhD degree he also obtained from Osaka University, in 1984.

In 1971 Hisashi joined the Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL) and started his research activity by getting involved in measurements of human hearing system and developing non-invasive methods of functional measurement of biological system. From mid-1980s on, he was developing SQUID and biomagnetic measurement systems at ETL, and eventually joined the Superconducting Sensor Laboratory (SSL), a MITI¹ consortium-type project (1990-1996) to develop large, multichannel magnetoencephalography (MEG) systems for human brain research and diagnostics. Hisashi was appointed the Research Director of SSL, a position equivalent to Chief Technical Officer in a company. His SSL activity culminated in the development, commissioning and research use of a 256-channel whole-head MEG system (complete with a special magnetic shielded room) then the largest in the world.

In 1995 Hisashi was appointed Professor at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT), and organized there the Applied Electronics Laboratory of KIT, which he then headed. The objective of this group has been to develop various measurement technologies for biomagnetism, applied physics and other industrial applications. Hisashi’s and the group’s major success was the completion and industrialization of a 160-channel whole-head MEG system² for medical research and diagnostics, which found use internationally, both in the US and in Europe.

For his achievements Hisashi received the New Technology Development Award of the “Japan Society of Medical and Biological Engineering, Science News”.

As his close collaborator, Gen Uehara, put it, “at SSL and KIT, Hisashi lead many young common researchers to achieve uncommon results, and eventually educated them to be next generation leaders in biomagnetism.” His premature departure leaves a deep void which will be difficult to fill.

¹MITI is the acronym of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
²Spun-off to the Eagle Technology Corporation, Inc., and to the Yokogawa Electric Corp.

Gert Eilenberger Passed away at 74

 January 14, 2011 (PO2). German theoretical physicist, Prof. Gert Eilenberger, passed away on November 21st, 2010, after a severe short illness. His rather sudden departure at 74 came as a sad surprise to his colleagues. He has been well-known to the superconductivity community as the originator of Eilenberger equations, which are applicable to BCS-like superconductors. These equations are a simplification of Gor’kov equations and are useful especially for superconducting alloys (1968).

Gert Eilenberger was born in 1936 in Hamburg, got his Ph.D. in 1961 under the well-known Friedrich Hund, and the habilitation (D.Sc.) in 1965, both at Göttingen. Soon after a postdoctoral stint at Cornell (1965-1967) he became affiliated with the Cologne University and was appointed full professor in 1970.

Eilenberger made significant contributions both to superconductivity, and to nonlinear dynamics. For over 30 years he was active in the Research Center Jülich (KFA later FZJ, Jülich, Germany) and founded there the present “Institute of Quantum Theory of Materials”. His activity included not only purely scientific work, but also various leading roles in the FZJ Senate, an advisory role at the DFG, the German equivalent of NSF (the US National Science Foundation), was Chairman of the Board of Europhysics Letters, member of the Academy of Sciences of NRW (Northrhine-Westphalia), etc. As a DFG advisor he was particularly helpful in supporting effective reorganization of science in Dresden, East Germany, after the German reunification. Once officially retired from FZJ, he became also quite active and successful in the communal politics of the City of Jülich.

Gert was a very engaged and passionate colleague with a strong instinct for what is right and beneficial to the community. His colleagues and collaborators appreciated his deep and broad knowledge as well as his warm heart and sense of humor. For this Editor it was a special privilege to know him and be able to interact with, also in matters of FZJ science policy of 1990s.

Alex I. Braginski

W. James Carr Jr. Passed Away at 92

November 23, 2010 (HE52). On November 16th, 2010, Walter James (“Jim”) Carr, Jr., author of the first useful monograph on ac losses in superconducting composite conductors [1] and of many important contributions to the field of magnetism and applied superconductivity, passed away at 92 at home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

Jim was born on May 6, 1918 in Knob Noster, Missouri. He initially intended to be a journalist, but instead enrolled at the Missouri School of Mines in Rolla (now University of Missouri at Rolla), because of a full-tuition scholarship; in 1940 he graduated there with a BS in engineering. He then entered Stanford University, CA, studied with Frederic Terman and graduated with MSEE in 1942. Upon graduation he was recruited by the Westinghouse Research Laboratories (later R&D Center) in Pittsburgh to join the wartime effort and was involved in defense projects. After the war, Westinghouse sponsored his graduate studies at Carnegie Tech (Now Carnegie-Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, PA. He wanted to study physics to know the "why" behind the engineering. When told he was too valuable to lose from the lab while getting a PhD, he went over his boss's head and was approved for graduate study with the endorsement that this was exactly the reason why he should have been approved and supported. He graduated with a PhD in physics in 1951 under Frederick Seitz.

Jim spent all his active career of 43 years at Westinghouse and attained the highest non managerial rank of Consulting Scientist, a rare distinction in that organization. In 1987 Jim was elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow for his contributions to theories of magnetism, and for development of the theory of alternating current losses in composite superconductors. He also became Fellow of the American Physical Society. A seminar at the Department of Physics, University of Maryland, features annually a W. James Carr, Jr. memorial lecture.

This Editor first read an important paper on magnetic anisotropy authored by Jim back in 1950s; it strongly influenced my own work at the very beginning of my professional career. I was thus truly awed when meeting him in person and having the privilege of working on his side some twenty plus years later. Those of us who knew Jim well admired equally his sharp mind, impeccably logical reasoning and his most courteous gentle manners. He was a true gentleman. Even after his retirement he remained quite active professionally; his last paper was published only 3 years ago. Until very recently he could be often encountered at various professional conferences. His departure is a big loss; we’ll miss him…
Alex I. Braginski

¹W. J. Carr, Jr. AC-loss and Macroscopic Theory of Superconductors, Gordon and Breach, 1983 (second edition in 2001).

Michael Tinkham Passes Away at 82

Broad thinker advanced both the theoretical and experimental understanding of superconductivity November 23, 2010 (HE51). Below we reproduce the integral text of the Harvard University obituary included in their press release of November 5, 2010.

Michael "Mike" Tinkham, whose latest appointment was as the Rumford Research Professor of Physics and Gordon McKay Research Professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Department of Physics, passed away on November 4, 2010. He was 82 years old.

Born on February 23, 1928 in Green Lake County, Wisconsin, Tinkham earned his undergraduate degree at Ripon College in 1951 and his Master's and Ph.D. degrees, both in physics, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1951 and 1954 respectively. He also spent a year at the Clarendon Laboratory of Oxford as a postdoctoral fellow.

He joined the University of California, Berkeley in 1957, rising to full professor, and then left in 1966 for Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his career. Tinkham's research focused primarily on superconductivity, as captured in his classic text, Introduction to Superconductivity. In his later years he was active in studying the unique properties of materials when sample dimensions are reduced to the nanometer range.

In the Journal of Superconductivity, Tinkham's former student Christopher Lobb '80 (Ph.D., Applied Physics), wrote:

The opportunity to work with Mike ... was one of the greatest experiences of my life. As a researcher, Mike's rare combination of experimental and theoretical ability has kept him at the top of the field for decades. As a teacher, Mike worked constantly to make things understandable, and did so with enthusiasm and wit. Any success I've had since leaving his group has largely been due to what I learned from him ...

Tinkham's awards and honors included election to the National Academy of Sciences; the receipt of the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize; and the Fred E. Saalfeld Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Science in 2005.

January 15, 2010 (HE38).  Praveen Chaudhari, the prominent science manager and scientist, long time the IBM Vice-President of Science and lately Director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, prematurely passed away in the night of 12 January 2010.  During his long tenure at IBM, he contributed in a major way to superconductivity.

Of his many direct contributions, the seminal and most prominent one is the systematic investigation of critical current dependence upon the grain boundary angle in rare earth cuprates (YBCO). This resulted in thus far the most reliable and broadly used technology of high-Tc Josephson junctions used in SQUIDs, HTS voltage standards, etc.  Furthermore, the bicrystal work provided foundation for the experimental confirmation and investigations of d-wave pairing in cuprates. It also led to the development of the HTS coated conductor technology. Also, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), he supported superconducting materials research and participated in it.  The summary of his recent results and thoughts on the grain boundaries in cuprates is given in his plenary EUCAS 2009 talk pre-published in our Issue 11 (to appear in Superconductor Science and Technology 2010).  For his achievements, Chaudhari has been honored with a number of awards.  He was an APS Fellow and member of the US National Academy of Engineering.  We reproduce his photo dating a few years back.
 

Vitaly L. Ginzburg – Brief Obituary

November 10, 2009 (HE36). Vitaly L. Ginzburg, 93, the co-author of the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) phenomenological theory of superconductivity preceding the microscopic BCS theory, died on November 8, 2009, apparently due to cardiac arrest.

Ginzburg, born on October 4th, 1916, in Moscow, Russia, graduated with Ph.D. in 1940 and D. Sc. in 1942. At that time he worked at the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow. He made also significant contribution to astrophysics and to nuclear fusion, specifically the Soviet H- bomb. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003, essentially for the GL theory. Readers interested in Ginzburg’s personal story and his views should refer to his brief autobiography, and an interview he most recently gave the Physics World (IOP). We reproduce his relatively recent photo (2003).