Alfred S. Goldhaber *64

Fred died Sept. 30, 2024.

Born in Urbana, Ill., in 1940, he graduated from Harvard in 1961 and earned his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton in 1964.

After postdoctoral study at UC Berkeley, Fred joined Stony Brook’s Institute for Theoretical Physics, now the C.N. Yang Institute, where he remained for 54 years.

Fred’s research spanned elementary particle and nuclear physics. With Wit Busza, he made a prediction about what could be learned from high-energy collisions of atomic nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven. Fred studied magnetic monopoles, particles that remain hypothetical, but many of whose properties can be predicted by careful quantum analysis, and how seemingly small changes to the accepted rules of the universe would disrupt familiar principles. Fred’s observations set extremely tiny limits on the mass of the photon and the graviton which established that the photon mass, if nonzero, is at least a factor of 10^-18 smaller than that of the electron.

Fred’s interdisciplinary course with Stony Brook’s philosophy department engaged undergraduates with the impact of quantum concepts on our culture, and became the basis of a book, The Quantum Moment.

Fred is survived by his wife, Suzan; children David and Sara; and five grandchildren.

Graduate alumni memorials are prepared by the APGA.