Eugene Saletan, a retired professor of physics emeritus at Northeastern University, died July 3, 2012, of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He was 87.
During World War II, Saletan served as a B-17 navigator and flew 27 missions over Germany, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1948, after which he earned a master’s degree in physics from Princeton in 1950 and completed his physics Ph.D. in 1960.
He taught physics at Rutgers, Cooper Union, the Birla Institute of Technology in India, and then for more than 25 years at Northeastern in Boston. In retirement, in 1998, he co-authored Classical Dynamics: A Contemporary Approach, following his previous co-written texts, Theoretical Mechanics (1971), and Dynamical Systems (1985). For amusement, he translated the children’s book The Crocodile (2007) from Russian.
As professor emeritus, Saletan worked at Northeastern in the SEED and RESEED programs to improve science teaching in middle and high schools. He also recorded science texts for blind and dyslexic students.
Saletan was predeceased by his first wife, Elma. He is survived by his second wife, Ellen Cole, and many close nieces, nephews, and cousins.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.