Thomas Deutsch, Physicist Pioneered Uses For Lasers, 74
DGH
Thomas F. Deutsch, a pioneering laser physicist whose research was on
the forefront of laser technology in military, industrial, and medical
fields, died early Monday, July 17, 2006, at his Cambridge,
Massachusetts, home of prostate cancer, at the age of 74.
"Tom Deutsch was an expert in laser technology ... and knowing the way
lasers affect tissues, and contributed significantly to the use of
lasers in medicine and surgery," said John Parrish, founder and
director of Massachusetts General Hospital Wellman Center for
Photomedicine, where Dr. Deutsch was a laser physicist since 1984. Dr.
Deutsch also was an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical
School.
"Using a savvy mixture of theoretical and applied physics, Tom and his
research team at MGH determined the molecular mechanisms of precise
laser cutting of tissue," Parrish said in a statement. "He was an
unselfish collaborator and a generous teacher."
At Wellman Center, where Dr. Deutsch worked on diagnostic and
therapeutic applications of lasers , he researched the broad areas of
laser-tissue interactions as well as optical diagnostic techniques.
On the center's website, he explained how his work on laser-tissue
interactions "has included the study of the way a variety of lasers cut
tissue, such as skin and the cornea of the eye, and the damage they
induce." He also studied the use of lasers to detect precancers in the
bladder and on the skin without being invasive .
"In the area of optical diagnostics, I have used pulsed laser heating
to measure the optical properties of tissue without contact," he wrote.
"I also used laser-induced fluorescence to quantify the
pharmacokinetics of fluorescent dyes in tissue and to detect precancers
in the bladder and on the skin."
Before dedicating his work toward medicine, Dr. Deutsch was among a
group of scientists who helped expand laser technology in the 1960s.
"If you needed a laser for any reason in those days, you had to build
it yourself," said Antonio Sanchez, a colleague from Dr. Deutsch's days
a decade later at Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington.
Dr. Deutsch worked in the research division of Raytheon Corp. from 1960
-- shortly after lasers were invented -- to 1974. At Raytheon, he wrote
for his obituary, he discovered infrared laser action in a variety of
gases.
His wife, Judy Foreman, a health columnist whose work appears in the
Globe, said that besides preparing his own obituary, he readied himself
for death in other ways.
"For years, we did what we called death-training," Foreman said. "Tom
would go around the house with me explaining how things worked. He
wrote his memorial service last fall. He left explicit directions for
me, from finances to mowing the lawn. He was really trying to take care
of me."
Dr. Deutsch had been diagnosed with lymphoma 11 years ago and with
prostate cancer five years ago, his wife said. Yet, he carried on,
hiking and traveling with her, working out in the gym until April, and
working at Wellman Center until recently.
After he left Raytheon in the '70s , Dr. Deutsch joined Quantum
Electronics Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's
Lincoln Laboratory, where he became involved in the use of lasers for
processing semiconductor chip materials.
"Tom was a pioneer in the development of new lasers," said Paul Kelley
of Newton, Dr. Deutsch's supervisor at the lab. "He was a great
collaborator and mentor to some of the younger scientists."
In 1991, seven years after Dr. Deutsch left Lincoln Lab, he and two of
his colleagues there shared the Wood Prize of the Optical Society of
America for "the pioneering discovery of new laser methods to
chemically process silicon chips," said Richard Osgood, one of the
three winners and now a professor at Columbia University. The other
colleague was Daniel Ehrlich, who is now with the Whitehead Institute
for Biomedical Research in Cambridge.
Dr. Deutsch's other research at Lincoln laboratory was also
significant, Osgood said. "He used lasers to excite other lasers. When
you do that, you can change the color of the laser wave." One of its
applications could be to separate isotopes of uranium, he said.
Thomas Frederick Deutsch was born in Vienna to George A. and Sabina
Deutsch. His father was a doctor, and his mother was a botanist. The
family fled the country in 1938 during the Nazi occupation when he was
about 6.
"We lived in Paris for nine months while my parents waited for a visa
to the United States," said Dr. Deutsch's younger sister, Elizabeth
Deutsch Earle of Ithaca, New York. "Tom went to a French school, and
then we sailed on one of the last ships to leave Europe for the United
States."
The family settled in Cleveland, Ohio, in "sort of a tough
neighborhood," Earle said. "My mother became angry with Tom when she
found him out shooting rats with the neighborhood kids." The family
moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, where Mrs. Deutsch became a language
teacher.
"Tom was always a science-nerd type," Earle said. "He built radios and
electronics in the cellar and was a ham radio operator."
After he graduated from Shaker Heights High School, Dr. Deutsch
received a Cleveland Alumni Club Scholarship and was accepted at Yale
University. He decided on Cornell, however, where he graduated from a
five-year engineering program in 1955. He earned his doctorate in
applied physics from Harvard University in 1961. ``Tom came to
Cambridge to do graduate work and never left," Earle said.
As a young, single man, Dr. Deutsch traveled widely -- to such places
as Burma, Nepal, Thailand, and India . Dr. Deutsch had shown no
interest in athletics as a student, but he later took up skiing,
tennis, and hiking.
He and Foreman met at a square dance at an Appalachian Mountain Club
lodge in New Hampshire 22 years ago. They married six years later, when
he was 58.
A tall, robust, energetic man, Dr. Deutsch kept fit both in mind and
body, returning to Burma with his wife in the late 1980s, hiking, and
satisfying his curiosity about other cultures. They hiked extensively
in Europe. Just last summer, Dr. Deutsch trekked with his family along
a 12,000-foot mountain in Colorado. ``Tom outhiked all of us," Foreman
said.
In his late 60s, Dr. Deutsch audited four courses at Harvard, where he
was an associate professor of medicine .
He loved to cook, especially Indian, Thai, and Chinese food. He spoke
German and French and was adept at other languages. He was a voracious
reader and a steadfast friend, his wife and friends said.
"Around the house, Tom could fix anything," Foreman said. "We have five
remotes for our TV and he networked our computers."
Dr. Deutsch's last gift to his wife was underway before he died. He had
workmen completing a railing around their deck so she would have a
better view of their garden.
Besides his wife and sister, Dr. Deutsch leaves a stepson, Michael
Sergio Foreman-Fowler of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and two grandsons.
Boston Globe -- Gloria Negri