James Willans Davisson ’38

Jim Davisson died Feb. 4, 1995, of a heart attack in his home in Oxon, Md.

The son and nephew of Nobel prizewinners in physics, Jim had grown up in a highly intellectual environment. He prepared at Exeter. At Princeton, he majored in physics and played varsity soccer for three years. He earned his Ph.D. at M.I.T., then served several years as a medic in the Philippines until the end of WWII.

Thereafter, he worked until his retirement at the Naval Research Labs near Washington, D.C., working in the new field of solid-state physics. Jim was modest and unassuming, and according to lifelong friend Frank Satterthwaite '38, he enjoyed physics for its beauty.

He married Charlotte Meaker, also a Ph.D. at Naval Labs. Both she and their daughter Nancy Elizabeth died in 1992. His sister Elizabeth and brother Richard survive, and we send our sincerest sympathies to them.