Merril Eisenbud

[kaplan@bnl.gov]

Merril Eisenbud died last Friday.  Without his knowledge, he profoundly
influended the evolution of my career.  I have no doubt the same holds
true for many others.

As a fledgling just-received-his-bachlors-degree physicist, I by chance
sat next to him at a conference in New York City in 1965.  The symposium
was sponsored by NYU, where I was a graduate student in physics.  I had no
idea who he was, and asked a somewhat naive question about the lecturer's
presentation [I believe it had to do, way back then, with the shape of
dose-response functions].  He patiently took time to explain the
importance of the topic, particularly, in his view, of the need to
understand such relationships then, as the environmental movement was
beginning to burgeon.  This was the seed of my subsequent interests in
radiation protection, environmental health, and safety.

I remembered those discussions several years later, when I had already
made the transition from physics to environmental engineering ...
actually, back then some still called it sanitary engineering.  I was
completing my PhD at UPenn in systems engineering (with an 'environmental'
focus) when I again happened to sit next to Prof Eisenbud at a conference
on future impacts of environmental contamination sponsored by (I believe)
the Phila Academy of Natural Sciences.  We had several pleasant
discussions, this time with greater understanding and appreciation on my
part of this man's extraordinary insight.

Several months ago I finished reading his "An Environmental Odyssey." 
This memoir is an exceptionally good description of a modern
man-for-all-seasons, a person whose intelligence, creativity, and
remarkable curiosity was fully devoted to improving the lot of humanity. 
He truly fathered and nurtured the development of industrial hygiene,
health physics, radiation protection, and environmental studies.  

Merril Eisenbud will be greatly missed by those of us who used him as a
paradigm, and in so doing fashioned their careers on the basis of his
persona.

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kaplan@bnl.gov   [Ed Kaplan  (516) 344-2007 (voice)/5810 (fax)] Brookhaven
National Laboratory
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