In Memoriam

The Miller Institute expresses its deepest sympathy to the families and friends of our former members who passed away.

  • Alexander (Alex) Pines (Miller Professor 1977-1978, 1998-1999, 2000), a pioneer in the development and applications of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, originally in solid-state NMR, passed away on November 1, 2024.

  • Alfred Goldhaber (MIller Fellow 1964-1966), whose outstanding research output spanned an uncommonly wide range of topics across elementary particle and nuclear physics, passed away on September 30, 2024.

  • Paul Richards (Miller Professor 1970-1971, 1987-1988, 2001), a pioneer in studies of the cosmic microwave background, passed away on September 16, 2024.

  • William Welch (Miller Professor 1999-2000), a pioneering astronomer whose visionary work in radio astronomy helped advance the search for extraterrestrial technology, passed away on March 10, 2024.

  • Boris Zemva (Visiting Miller Professor 1993), recognised throughout the world as one of the best scientists in the inorganic fluorine chemistry, high-energy oxidizers and coordination compounds with noble gas fluorides as ligands, passed away in November 2023.

  • Theodore Van Duzer (Miller Professor Spring 1990), a pioneer in Superconducting Digital Electronics, passed away on October 24, 2023.

  • Joseph A. Wolf (Miller Professor 1972-1973, 1983-1984), a mathematician, whose primary research interest focused in Geometry/Topology, passed away on August 14, 2023.

  • Calvin C. Moore (Miller Professor 1978-1979), a mathematician, whose promary research interests included mathematical analysis and algebra, passed away on July 26, 2023.

  • Allen Joseph Lichtenberg (Miller Professor 1968-1969), known for research associated with high-temperature plasma, nonlinear dynamics, and energy utilization, passed away on February 21, 2023

  • Astrid Kiendler-Scharr (Visiting Miller Professor 2022), the internationally renowned atmospheric and climate researcher, died suddenly and unexpectedly on February 6, 2023.

  • John Hearst (Miller Professor 1970-1971), a prominent figure in the field of psoralen interactions with nucleic acids, an area of research that he largely developed, passed away on October 25, 2022.

  • Pravin Varaiya (Miller Professor 1978-1979),  known for his seminal contributions to the engineering, analysis, and design of complex energy, transportation, and communication systems, and was credited with spearheading the self-driving car revolution in the 1990s., died on June 10, 2022.

  • Karl Pister (Miller Professor 1962-1963), an engineering professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former UC Santa Cruz chancellor who devoted more than 70 years to the university, to higher education and to expanding educational opportunities for students from kindergarten to graduate school, died on Saturday, May 14, 2022.

  • Rober Harris (Miller Professor 1975-1976), theoretical chemist, died on April 12, 2022.

  • Andrew Streitweiser (Miller Professor 1964-1965, 1979-1980, Executive Committee 1981-1984, Executive Director 1983-1984, Executive Committee 1992-1993), a “major figure” in the field of physical and organic chemistry and one of the earliest contributors to applying physical techniques to organic chemistry, died on February 24, 2022.

  • P. Buford Price (Miller Professor 1972-1973), whose scientific accomplishments contributed to a wide range of disciplines, died on December 28, 2021.

  • Anthony Marley, Miller Fellow 1965-1967, a brilliant scholar of mathematical and computational models of perception and cognition and their empirical study, died suddenly on June 14, 2021.

  • Barry Sinervo, Miller Fellow 1988-1990, a Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz known for groundbreaking research in evolutionary biology and on the impacts of climate change, died on March 15, 2021.

  • Isadore Singer, Miller Professor 1982-1983, an enormously influential figure in 20th-century science whose work united mathematics and physics, died on Feb. 11, 2021. 

  • William Clemens, Miller Professor 1982-1983, expert on fossil mammals, died on November 17, 2020.

  • Sir Vaughan F. R. Jones, Miller Professor 1992, Miller Institute Executive Committee & Advisory Board Member, one of the world’s foremost mathematicians and a celebrated  Professor in Vanderbilt University, died suddenly on Sept. 6, 2020.

  • Stephen Glickman, Miller Fellow 1962-1964, Miller Professor 1993, a pioneer in behavioral endocrinology and founder of the world’s first colony of captive spotted hyenas. Died May 22, 2020.

  • Charles Harris, Miller Professor 1984-1985, a world leader in the field of condensed phase chemical dynamics, with a focus on the areas of ultrafast and electron dynamics at interfaces and chemical reaction dynamics in liquids. Passed away March 10, 2020.

  • Leon Wofsy, Miller Professor 1977-1978, led a pioneering research on the use of antibodies to deliver effective therapies directly and specifically to the site of disease. Passed away August 25, 2019.

  • Frederick Reif, Miller Professor 1964-1965, educator, author and researcher. Passed away August 11, 2019.

  • Jerome R. Singer, Miller Professor 1960-1961, a pioneer in the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), passed away July 30, 2019.

  • Charles Kittel, Miller Professor 1959-1961. His famous textbook "Introduction to Solid State Physics" remains a classic. Died May 15, 2019.

  • Geoffrey Chew, Miller Professor 1981-1982, led an infuluential theory group, and was known as a leader of the S-matrix approach to the strong interaction and the associated bootstrap principle. Died April 12, 2019.

  • Elwyn Berlekamp, Miller Professor 1974-1975, game theorist and coding pioneer, dies at 78. His error-correcting codes helped spacecraft send accurate, detailed and beautiful images back to Earth. Died April 9, 2019.

  • Grigory Barenblatt, Visiting Miller Professor 1996, one of leading applied mathematicians world-wide, with extraordinary contributions to a wide variety of fields, including fluid mechanics, turbulence, flow in porous media, fracture, materials science, scaling, asymptotics and intermediate asymptotics. Died on June 22, 2018.

  • Eugene Haller, Miller Professor 1990, 2001, professor emeritus in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and founder of the Electronic Materials Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), highly regarded leader in the field of semiconductor materials. Died on June 22, 2018.

  • George Oster, Miller Professor 1983-1984, 2003, best known for illuminating the mechanisms and forces that allow cells and bacteria to move through their environments. Passed away on April 15, 2018.

  • Martin Halpern, Miller Professor 1999, world renown theoretical physicist. Died on January 21, 2018.

  • David Schlegel, Miller Professor 1966-1967, renowned plant pathologist. Died December 2017.

  • William A. Klemperer, Visiting Miller Professor 1998, one of the most influential chemical physicists and molecular spectroscopists in the second half of the 20th century. Passed away on November 5, 2017.

  • Sir Patrick Bateson, Visiting Miller Professor 1986, a key figure in ethology, the biological study of animal behaviour. Passed away on August 1, 2017.

  • Marina Ratner, Miller Professor 1985 - 1986, mathematician specializing in ergodic theory and its connections with other parts of mathematics. She earned many honors, including the Ostrowski prize and the John J. Carty Award. Passed away on July 7, 2017.

  • Elias Burstein, Visiting Miller Professor 1996, a pioneering physicist whose research helped pave the way for the development of silicon semiconductors. Passed away on June 17, 2017.

  • Franz Kamber, Miller Fellow 1965 - 1967, mathematician specializing in Differential Geometry, Geometric Analysis, Topology, with emphasis on Foliation Theory. Passed away on June 13, 2017.

  • David Chandler, Senior Miller Professor 2016, Miller Professor 1999-2000, Executive Committee of the Miller Institute 2002-2008, Professor Emeritus of the Graduate School Department of Chemistry, UC Berkeley. Passed away on April 18, 2017.

  • Mildred Dresselhaus, Advisory Board Member 1994 -2000, a pioneer in the electronic properties of materials, the first woman to win the National Medal of Science in Engineering in 1990 and the Medal of Freedom in 2014. Died on February 20, 2017.

  • Bertram Kostant, Miller Professor 1958 - 1959, an innovative mathematician who made key contributions to representation theory and Lie theory. Passed away on February 2, 2017.

  • Gerald (Jerry) McClearn, Miller Professor 1962 - 1963, an American behavior geneticist and professor emeritus of health and human development and biobehavioral health. Died on January 5, 2017.

  • Ermi Zhao, Visiting Miller Professor 1991, a world-renowned herpetologist. Died on December 24, 2016.

  • Kwok Yung (Fred) Lo, Miller Fellow 1976 - 1978, director emeritus of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and renowned researcher. Died on December 16, 2016.

  • Ignacio Tinoco, Miller Professor 1963 - 1964, chemist, pioneer in RNA folding. Died on November 15, 2016.

  • Leonid Keldysh, Visiting Miller Professor 1997, a physicist, known for the Keldysh formalism, a quantum field theory framework designed to describe a system in a non-equilibrium state, as well as for the theory of excitonic insulators. Passed away on November 11, 2016.

  • Ian Smith, Visiting Miller Professor 1996, a leading researcher in reaction kinetics, energy transfer and molecular dynamics in gas phase systems. Died on November 8, 2016.

  • Zygmunt Hejnowicz, Visiting Miller Professor 1998, best known for his contribution to plant development, anatomy, and biophysics. Died on May 1, 2016.

  • Sir Harry Kroto, member of the Miller Institute Advisory Board 2009 - 2015. Passed away on April 30, 2016.

  • Walter Freeman, Miller Professor 1978 - 1979. Died on April 24, 2016.

  • Adam Dziewonski, Visiting Miller Professor 1995. Passed away on March 1, 2016.

  • William Craig, Miller Professor 1965 - 1966. Passed away on January 13, 2016

  • Ernest S. Kuh, Miller Professor 1965 - 1966. Passed away on June 29, 2015.

  • Stephen P.L. Diliberto, Miller Professor 1958. Passed away in 2015.