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Harry Brumberger (1926-2000)

[Brumberger]
H. Brumberger, Professor of Chemistry at Syracuse U. and a pioneer in the field of small-angle scattering, died Nov. 10, 2000. Harry came to the US from Vienna, Austria with his parents, who were fleeing anti-Semitic persecution. His PhD in chemistry (1955) was directed by Rudolph Marcus, later a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry. After his PhD he worked as a post-doctoral associate with Nobel Prize winner, Peter Debye at Cornell U. He joined the Chemistry Dept. at Syracuse U. in 1957 where he served as director of the Graduate Biophysics Program and of the Solid State Science and Technology Program. Harry became an expert in small angle scattering and he organized the first international conference on the topic in Syracuse, and a NATO Advanced Inst. on Small-Angle Scattering in Como, Italy in 1993. He was engaged most recently in small-angle scattering measurements on supported-metal catalysts using Synchrotron Radiation. He was a visiting scholar at the U. of Graz (Austria), the Weizmann Inst. of Science (Israel), the U. of Cambridge (England), and the Swiss Federal Inst. of Technology (ETH) (Zürich, Switzerland). His publications are characterized by concision and clarity. The same desire for clarity informed his teaching. His adeptness at puncturing pomposity and signaling unclear thinking in others probably did not endear him to everyone. Receiving correspondence from Harry was a great pleasure, due equally to the elegance of the writing style and the intelligence of the content. In an interview Harry told a reporter about the joys of scientific research, and how they made all the hardships worthwhile. His devotion to his research is one of the things we will long remember. We will also miss his elegance, wit, erudition, and the other qualities which made him such a great colleague and friend.
J. Goodisman, USA, S. Ciccariello, Italy, G. Kostorz, Switzerland
23 June 2009