Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist, Gus Zorn passed away on January 30, 2002 after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Gus was born June 18, 1924. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Padua, Italy in 1954. He began working in our High Energy group in 1962. Before that time, he spent one year as a visiting scientist at the Max Plank Institute of Physics (1958) while serving as an associate physicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (1956-1962). He was a recipient of the General Research Board Award for the year 1987-1988, an APS Fellow and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences. Gus was a participant in the OPAL and JADE experiment as well as a number of other important high energy physics experiments.

In 1992, after the death of his wife in 1984, Bice http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~cwp/Phase2/Sechi-Zorn,_Bice@853449324.html also a professor in our department, Gus established a Francis Scott Key Scholarship Fund at the University of Maryland in her honor. This fund benefits outstanding science students with an interest in physics.

Dr. Zorn with Former University of Maryland President, Dr. Kirwan

Indicative of his sincere dedication to academic excellence in science at the University, his last wish was to establish the “Gus T. Zorn and Bice Sechi-Zorn Professorship in Experimental Physics.” Through this gift, their lives’ work will continue enrich the quality of education offered by the Maryland Physics Department.

After discussions with some of his close colleagues we realized that we in the Physics Department were, in essence, Gus and his wife's only family. Therefore, it seems appropriate to hold a memorial service here at the University of Maryland. Our current plan is to arrange a memorial in late April for us to remember and honor both Gus and his wife, Bice Sechi-Zorn. As we approach April, please feel free to send us your thoughts on the Zorn's lives and contributions to the department, so that we might incorporate them into our service. Information can be sent to the Physics Chair's Office by email: phys-chair@physics.umd.edu or 1117 Physics Bldg.