William Munro Preston ’30

The Class of 1930 has many members with outstanding talents. One of the greatest of these died of cancer at his home in Lincoln, Mass., on Apr. 18. At Princeton, Bill Preston majored in physics and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He later received an M.A. (1933) and Ph.D. (1936) at Harvard, where he taught until 1941. He spent the war years in England and at M.I.T., working on the development of radar, and during the early postwar years (1946-52), he worked on nuclear research in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and at M.I.T. In 1952, he joined the faculty at Harvard, where he lectured, chaired the physics dept., and served as director of the school's cyclotron and phys¬ics laboratories. Before he retired, in 1978, he also was deeply involved in researching the clinical application of proton beams in cancer therapy. Bill was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Acad¬emy of Arts and Sciences. He founded the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust, which now has 36 miles of hiking and riding trails; traveled extensively as an avid bird¬watcher; and for years supported the Asa Wright Nature Center, in Trinidad.

Bill's first wife, Jean Wood, died in 1980. He married Paula Larned Whiller in 1981. Survivors include his widow; five daughters, Anne Knowlton and Katherine Preston (of Lincoln), Sarah Carleton (of Cambridge, Mass.), Jean Guyton (of Lakewood, Colo.), and Judith Gould (of Norwich, Conn.); a stepdaughter, Newell Knobloch (of Ft. Myers, Fla.); 13 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. We extend our condolences in the loss of this man of many accomplishments.

The Class of 1930