5 In memoriam: Rudi Nussbaum, 1922-2011 rofessor Emeritus Rudi Nussbaum died in a Netherlands hospital July 22, 2011 of injuries sustained in a fall that occurred two days earlier in the Amsterdam airport. He and his wife, Laureen Nussbaum, PSU Emeritus Professor of Foreign Lan- guages and Literatures, were homeward bound after traveling to Western European countries where they had lived before emigrating to the United States. Fortunately, their two sons, Ralph and Fred, and their wives could join him during his last hours. A large number of Rudi’s Rudi Nussbaum in 1982 colleagues and friends gathered Sunday, Oct. 23, 2011 at University Place for a celebration of his remarkable life. Born March 21, 1922 in Furth, Bavaria, Rudi lived there until 1931 when his father, a pharmacist, moved the family to Frankfurt. In 1936 the Nussbaums fled Nazi Germany, taking refuge in Italy. By 1938 that country no longer offered a safe haven and the family moved to Amsterdam. Two years later Nazi forces overran the Netherlands, and eventually the German occupiers deported his parents to death camps. Rudi survived by joining the resistance and going underground until Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945. Nazi persecution from 1936 to 1945 had precluded any regular schooling. In the fall of 1945, 23-year old Rudi enrolled as a senior in a Dutch academic high school and in July 1946, by dint of intensive studying and tutoring, he passed the final exams required for university admission. His tutors included two other members of the German-Jewish refugee community, Laureen Klein and her sister. Rudi and Laureen married in 1947 to begin a long, productive and fulfilling life together. Rudi matriculated at the University of Amsterdam to study experimental nuclear physics, completing a doctoral degree in 1954. During 1954-1955 he held a UNESCO fellowship at the University of Liverpool, followed by year-long senior research appointments at the University of Indiana and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva. From 1957 to 1959 he served as an assistant professor of physics at the University of California, Davis. In 1959 Rudi joined Portland State College’s Division of Science as an associate professor of physics. At that juncture, PSC faculty members faced daunting undergraduate classroom teaching assignments with large enrollments under conditions that afforded little time or few facilities for research. Science faculty offices, classrooms and laboratories utilized cramped space adjacent to a basement gymnasium in the former Lincoln High School building, today’s Lincoln Hall. Nevertheless, Rudi and his colleagues worked hard to develop a department that would undergird the institution as it improved, expanded, and moved forward to become a comprehensive university offering both high quality undergraduate instruction and significant graduate studies and research programs. One of Rudi’s main contributions to the research enterprise at Portland State was his work in collaboration with Professor Donald Howard and colleagues at the University of Washington on Mossbauer spectroscopy, a rare blending from the fields of solid state and nuclear physics. Instructional, research, and publication achievements led PSU to honor him in 1982 with the Branford P. Millar Award for Faculty Excellence. During his three-decade long PSU career, Professor Nussbaum continuously engaged in faculty governance activities. Colleagues throughout the institution acknowledged the highest level of respect for his faculty service on departmental and university curriculum committees. Soon after his arrival at PSC he participated in strengthening the American Association of University Professors organization, later serving as chapter president and working for its selection as faculty bargaining agent. As a scientist who had survived the Holocaust and become a dedicated pacifist, Rudi emerged as an outspoken advocate for international peace and a proponent of raising alarm about the dangers of nuclear radiation. His active environmental science research—in collaboration with departmental and international colleagues—verified the dangers of low level radiation and vigorously disputed governmental and private agencies that downplayed dangers of nuclear power generation. In collaboration with organizations such as Physicians for Social Responsibility, these findings publicized the adverse health effects inflicted on the Columbia River region’s population living downwind of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. continued on page 6 P
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