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Death notice
Edwin E. Salpeter
03 December 1924 - 26 November 2008
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
Submitted by Physics Today Editorial Staff
Published on 05 January 2009
Current comments and reminiscences on Edwin E. Salpeter:
Edwin E. Salpeter
Physics Today
Edwin E. Salpeter, Leader in Astrophysics Study, Dies at 83
The New York Times
Edwin E. Salpeter Astrophysicist
The Washington Post
Edwin Salpeter (1924–2008)
Nature
Edwin Salpeter Astrophysicist and pioneer of man's grasp of stellar evolution
The Guardian
Professor Edwin Salpeter: Seminal astrophysicist who made pivotal contributions to the study of the universe
The Independent
In the Fall of 1956, when I arrived at Cornell as a graduate student, I had the very good fortune of having Ed as my advisor. In my first encounter with him he advised me among other things to take the graduate physics course in experimental physics. I responded that I wanted to become a theorist, and told him that I had taken enough experimental courses as an undergraduate at M.I.T., which included even learning glass blowing techniques, to last me for a lifetime. But Ed insisted, and reluctantly I agreed.
This course turned out to be one of the most important courses that I took as a student, and I still have my lab book with the data I took at the time. Among other things I had to take x‑ray diffraction data from powder crystals with a very old and unstable x‑ray generator, I think of 1935 vintage, which was housed in Rockefeller ( G. Cocconi marked my results " quite good") Ed also suggested that I attend a course he was giving in the Fall on quantum field theory, which was a tall order for an entering student who had learned only non‑relativistic quantum mechanics. It turned out that his course was based on Feynman's 1949 papers on his space‑time approach to quantum electrodynamics. This was a very difficult class for those of us who did not have any prior courses in quantum field theory, but somehow Ed managed to teach us Feynman's novel methods which appeared to be pulled out of thin air. ln my class notes, I referred to these methods as ad‑hoc, but I don't know whether this was my own comment or Ed's. I recall that one other fellow student, J.J. Sakurai, who had arrived at Cornell the same year I did, seemed to be able to follow the details, but he had had the good fortune of attending a course on quantum field theory from Schwinger when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, so Ed's topic was not totally new to him.
During his lectures, Ed sometimes appeared not to care for mathematical details, and physical constants were left out of his equations on the board. We used to joke about these apparent lapses as the Salpeter units where most constants where set equal to one. Later, I learned that these units were legitimate. What mattered to him, was to impart the physical ideas, and we had to work out the math. In contrast some other teachers wrote out carefully equations on the board, so I never bothered to check them. Ed's pedagogical technique was superior, much like Vicky Weiskopf who I had as an undergraduate teacher in quantum mechanics at M.I.T., and later I tried to emulate their approach in my own teaching.
During my first summer at Cornell, Ed suggested that I work on a problem that had something to do with how three helium atoms form a carbon nucleus, but most of the time he was gone, and I made no progress on my own. Only after I had left Cornell, did I learn the significant contribution that Ed made to this problem. He never mentioned it, and in this case his well known modesty left me uninformed. In the winter, Ed took some of us to a nearby ski resort, Greek Peak, which at the time had only a tow rope. I had never been on skis before, and I can't remember how I got up or down the slope, except that such trips were a lot of fun. On one occasion Tommy Gold came along too. He was very entertaining talking about galactic magnetic fields like these were spaghetti, but for this reason I mistook him to be a bit of a crackpot. After a distinguished colloquium speaker visited Cornell, Ed sometimes organized a reception at his house and invited some of his students. Somewhere I have a photo of one of these events showing Frank Yang who was the speaker, Marc Kac, and Ronnie Peierls who was another of my fellow students. Ed's friendliness and unassuming behavior gave me some confidence to follow a a career in physics which sometimes I had questioned after having encounters with some of our physics prima donnas during my school years.
Michael NauenbergSanta Cruz, CA