Ralph B. Snyder Jr. ’59

Born into an Air Force family in Shreveport, La., Ralph moved regularly in his childhood, living in Japan and Korea before attending high school in Belleville, Ill., his last stop before coming to Princeton.

At Princeton Ralph majored in physics, ate at Prospect Club, was an engineer at WPRB, and roomed with Peter Roemer, Mike Fried, Dick Kolbert, and Tom Philips. Following Princeton, Ralph earned a doctorate in physics at Harvard and worked for a time as a research scientist at Harvard College Observatory. By 1978 he had moved on to the University of Connecticut as a physics professor, where he spent the rest of his career.

Ralph changed his name at some point from “Ralph” to “Rand” and was thus referred to in his obituary, but according to Peter Roemer, “his old friends still called him Ralph.” He died Oct. 23, 2017, of complications from lymphoma treatment.

His marriage in 1963 to Mary Livingston ended in divorce. They had three children: Kenneth, Douglas, and Katherine, all of whom survive him, and to all of whom the class extends its sympathies.