APS News

June 2011 (Volume 20, Number 6)

Centenarian APS President

A Long and Distinguished Career

Goldhaber web large
Photo courtesy of Alfred Scharff Goldhaber

Maurice Goldhaber, shown here in a photo from 2003, turned 100 years old this year on April 18, and died on May 11 as APS News was going to press. He served as APS President in 1982, one of many accomplishments over a long and distinguished career. He was Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1961 to 1973, and received the National Medal of Science in 1983, as well as the APS Tom Bonner Prize in 1971 and many other awards. Goldhaber was also the senior member of an extensive family in physics. His late brother, Gerson, was professor of physics at Berkeley for many years, and his son, Alfred, is professor of physics at Stony Brook. Both Maurice's wife, Gertrude, and Gerson's first wife, Sulamith, were nuclear physicists, and Maurice's grandson, David Goldhaber-Gordon, is a professor at Stanford in condensed-matter physics.