George Henry Stauss ’53

George died Dec. 21, 2005, after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer.

Born in East Orange, N.J., March 25, 1932, he moved with his family to Alexandria, Va., in 1947 to the house he was living in at the time of his death. In 1948, he first worked at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). He graduated from Mount Vernon High School in 1949. At Princeton, he majored in physics and sang in the freshman glee club.

After Navy service he entered Stanford as a physics graduate student. He did his research in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) under Felix Bloch, 1952 Nobel laureate for the discovery of NMR. Today, NMR is used in a valuable medical tool, MRI. At Stanford, George joined Princeton classmate Roger Miller and other students Tom Midford, Janet and Roger DeBar, Helen and Peter Graham, Bob Traughber, and Jim Pearson.

Mary Oberg, also a student, married George in 1959. He received a Ph.D. in physics in 1961 and returned to NRL working on NMR. In 1991, he retired from NRL and joined Mary's patent business, from which they retired in 2001. He enjoyed community activities, opera, travel, and reading.

George is survived by Mary; his children Cady Alan Stauss and Karen Stauss; and four granddaughters.

The Class of 1953