Obituary of Converse Herrick Blanchard

Converse Herrick (“Connie”) Blanchard, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, died while vacationing in Chilmark, MA, on August 13, 2009 at the age of 85. He was born September 25, 1923, in Boston, MA and earned an AB from Harvard College in 1945. He served in the U. S. Navy Reserve from 1942-53. Blanchard earned a Ph.D in Physics, with a thesis in nuclear theory under the direction of R. G. Sachs, from the University of Wisconsin in 1950. From 1950 to 1953 he was a member of the National Bureau of Standards and then from 1953 to 1961 was Assistant and Associate Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University. He returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as Associate Professor in 1961 and was promoted to Professor in 1963. He served as Associate Chair of the Department from 1961 to 1981 and continued serving the Physics Department and the University until his retirement in 1991 and even up to his death.

He was a remarkably effective teacher at many educational levels. The university recognized his teaching of undergraduate and graduate students with a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1987. After his retirement he began a series of visits to third grade class-rooms in the Madison area with “traveling physics demonstrations” where he made hour-long presentations that got enthusiastic responses from the students and teachers. There were more than 1600 of these presentations.

He was a serious scholar and continued his scientific endeavors up to his death.

Connie also was a mentor to graduate students and faculty. He was a living embodiment of institutional memory, especially for the physics department. He tracked our graduates as they went on in their careers and paid special attention to the students they recommended to us. One faculty member who worked with him in the graduate admissions process comments: “I worked with Connie on the admissions committee and was amazed by his thorough knowledge of each and every candidate. We strongly relied on his knowledge and recommendations. I have no idea how he absorbed so much information from the huge collection of applications. Once the new students arrived, he seemed to personally look after them.” Another describes the process as: “He delighted in searching through 500 to 1000 applications to find ‘diamonds in the rough’. These ‘diamonds’ were applicants with less than perfect records who had great research potential.”

He co-authored a physics text “Introduction to Modern Physics.” This fine textbook went through two editions from 1960 to 1970. He also left a record of his experiments for the third graders with a report “Nine experiments for a third-grade hour” published in 2003. Some comments from his introduction to that report will give a sense of his approach: “I try to show with these experiments that there are things in this world that are interesting and simple enough to understand and that, therefore, it does pay to try to think for oneself.... Why the third grade? I tried it there and it seemed to work.” These experiments no doubt lead students to realize that not only simple things but even complicated physical systems can be understood in detail. He created a course “Energy” that was attended by many students interested in the fundamental physics that goes into our present energy and environmental problems.

Connie was President of the Wisconsin Association of Physics Teachers in 1970-71 and 1984-85. He received their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.He was also a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was a founding member and initial chair of the Madison group of Amnesty International.

Connie, having been a graduate student in Madison, fully embraced the University of Wisconsin and seemed to much prefer its atmosphere to the more staid New England and Harvard of his youth. We know of no greater enthusiastfor our University and community.

He is survived by his wife, June Weisberger Blanchard, four children, and five grandchildren. His first wife, Margaret (Mardie) Blanchard, predeceased him in 1981.