Fermilab Co-Founder Edwin "Ned" Goldwasser Dies at Age 97

Edwin "Ned" Goldwasser, the co-founder of Fermilab in Batavia, died last week at the age of 97.

Goldwasser, one of the world’s most prominent physicists, spent decades at the University of Illinois and the university’s physics department credited Goldwasser’s work for helping to explain nuclear force, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

The University of Illinois, in an “in memoriam” article posted on its website, wrote about Goldwasser’s work while at the university:

Goldwasser vigorously pursued both research and teaching as a member of the faculty. He was the author of numerous technical publications on the properties of cosmic rays, energy loss of charged particles, photon interactions, and elementary particle interactions. He took a leading role in efforts by a consortium of Midwestern universities in the 1950s and 1960s to strengthen their research facilities in high-energy physics and to locate a national accelerator in the central United States.

Goldwasser was able to use his influence to persuade President Lyndon Johnson to locate a high-flight research facility in Illinois, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

From 1967 to 1978, Goldwasser took an extended leave of absence from the University of Illinois to serve at the new facility in Batavia.

“When Ned took leave from the University of Illinois to help create Fermilab from green fields, the project took on new dimensions: a truly effective concern for the variety of people to build it, and a dedication to make it both fruitful for its users and attractive for the professional development of its staff,” said University of Illinois Professor Emeritus Ralph Simmons. “All this was combined with contagious yet critical enthusiasm for the discoveries made possible.”

Goldwasser oversaw the construction of National Accelerator Laboratory — completing it on time and under budget — scheduled its experimental program, managed its Program Advisory Committee and implemented its groundbreaking equal employment program, according to a Fermilab news release. Together with Director Robert Wilson, he authored the laboratory’s original “Policy on Human Rights,” issued in 1968.

“Among many things I think of when I remember Goldwasser’s contribution was his impact on the experimental areas, the bubble chamber program, neutrino physics and the development of the theory group,” Carrigan said.

“He gave the laboratory a place for the users, which was not the case in the other laboratories,” said former Fermilab Director John Peoples, who notes that Goldwasser also created room and budget for lab scientists to allow them to go to conferences and bring equipment to the experiments they worked on.

After setting Fermilab firmly on its feet, Goldwasser returned to the University of Illinois in 1978 as vice chancellor for research and dean of the Graduate College. In 1986, he took another extended leave to join the Central Design Group of the proposed Superconducting Super Collider accelerator facility, where he served as associate director until 1988. In 1990, following his retirement from the university, he was appointed a Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology to work on the LIGO project.

“Ned was a natural leader, who was instrumental in making Fermilab a place where both physics and physicists thrived,” said Barry Barish, professor emeritus of physics at Caltech and the first director of LIGO.

“I will personally miss his wisdom and guidance. In every way, Ned was a class act.”

Goldwasser did his undergraduate work at Harvard University. Following service as a physicist with the United States Navy, he received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, then served a year on the faculty there before going to the University of Illinois in 1951.

He and his wife, Lizie, had been married for 76 years when Goldwasser died on Dec. 14 in Urbana. He is also survived by his five children, Mike, John, Kathy, Davey and Ricky. Besides his obvious achievements in the world of Physics and for Fermilab, Goldwasser is being remembered as a dedicated teacher, a tireless advocate for education and equal rights and a tennis player and swimmer, according to his obituary.

Photo credit: University of Illinois Physics Department