Fwd: [PHYS-ALL] sad news: Martin Reiser's passing
Jacob Fisher
Via the University of Maryland Physics department, I have learned that a neighbor of ours has passed away.
-Jacob
From: Drew Baden <dr...@physics.umd.edu>
Date: Mon, May 2, 2011 at 2:00 PM
Subject: [PHYS-ALL] sad news: Martin Reiser's passing
To: PHYS...@listserv.umd.edu
From: Patrick O'Shea <pos...@umd.edu>
Date: May 2, 2011 1:44:08 PM EDT
To: Drew Baden <dr...@physics.umd.edu>, Alex Dragt <dr...@umd.edu>
Subject: Martin Reiser
Dear Colleagues,Our good friend, and distinguished colleague, Prof. Martin Reiser, passed away peacefully last night at his home, three weeks after celebrating his eightieth birthday. Throughout his long career at Maryland, beginning in 1965 with joint appointments in Physics and Electrical Engineering, Martin played a pivotal role in establishing the University as the research powerhouse it is today. Beginning with his contributions to the design of the Maryland Cyclotron, he then moved on to form the Charged Particle Beam Group, co-founded of our Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, and along the way led the creation of our applied electromagnetics and beam physics programs. Both nationally and internationally, he played a major role in establishing particle beam physics as an academic discipline, and was one of the leaders in the creation of the Beam Physics Division at the American Physical Society in the late 1980s.Martin was also an extraordinarily accomplished educator and mentor. As a student, I remember the lucidity of his lectures, his excellent physical intuition, and the careful mentoring he gave his students. Martin was always proud that he managed to avoid becoming an administrator, and he often admonished me for failing to follow his example. Martin showed tremendous courage in fighting his illnesses over the past decade. He continued to work diligently on his beloved beam physics, and he completed the second edition of his seminal text Theory and Design of Charged Particle Beams in 2008. Martin is survived by his wife Inge, daughter Bettina, and son Christopher.We will miss him dearly.I will send details of his memorial service later. You may send expressions of sympathy to Martin's wife Inge at 7 Arlive Ct., Rockville MD 20854.
PatProfessor Martin Reiser received his doctorate in physics in 1960 from the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany, while working as a Research Physicist at the AEG-Forschungsinstitut Frankfurt (from 1958 to 1961) on the design of the sector-focusing cyclotron for the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center. From 1961 to 1964 he was Assistant Professor in the Physics Department of Michigan State University, and from 1964 to 1965 he worked as a Supervisory Research Physicist at the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, San Francisco, California. In September 1965, he joined the University of Maryland as Associate Professor, with a joint appointment in the Electrical Engineering Department and the Department of Physics, and he has been a Full Professor there since 1970. He was co-founder of the University of Maryland's Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (formerly the Institute for Plasma Research), established in 1981.Professor Reiser's experimental and theoretical research was in the area of charged particle beam physics and accelerator design. His research work and interests ranged from cyclotrons and collective accelerators (in the sixties and seventies) to advanced accelerator applications (in recent years) in high energy physics, in the energy field (e.g., heavy-ion-driven inertial fusion), in material science, and in other areas. A major focus of the research with his graduate students and collaborators in the advanced accelerator field was the physics of space-charge dominated beams and sources of beam quality deterioration due to mismatch, lack of thermal equilibrium, nonlinear forces, instabilities, dispersion, and other effects.
Professor Reiser was author or co-author of more than 200 research papers, co-editor of two books, and the author of the book Theory and Design of Charged Particle Beams. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and of the IEEE, and he has served on numerous national and international committees. He has served as chair of the Executive Committee of the APS Division of Physics of Beams, and of the Program Committee for the 1997 Particle Accelerator Conference in Vancouver, and president of the Washington DC Chapter of the Alexander von Humboldt Association of America.
Professor Reiser retired in 1998 from his teaching position in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He continued to work part-time with his research group in the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics as Senior Research Scientist.
