Ethan Davidson Alyea Jr. ’53

Dave died May 27, 2018, of complications from a stroke in Bloomington, Ind.

Dave was born in Key West, Fla., and came to Princeton from Pittsfield High School and Governor Dummer. He joined Cannon Club and majored in music, writing his thesis on New Orleans jazz.

Dave moved to Caltech after graduation and spent the next nine years working on his Ph.D. and participating in the construction of a heavy liquid bubble chamber to be used as a tool in high-energy nuclear physics research. He then moved to Indiana University to teach physics and do experimental high-energy physics using bubble chambers at Argonne National Lab, the National Accelerator Lab, and at Fermilab outside Chicago.

In 1970, he won the Standard Oil of Indiana Foundation Award for distinguished teacher of the year. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Dave was part of a team that designed and ran the large volume detector in a lab under the Gran Sasso Mountain outside L’Aquila, Italy.

Dave is survived by his wife, Sandra; their four children, Caroline ’85, Peter, Clark ’91, and Garret ’96; and three grandchildren.