David J. Sellmyer

David J. Sellmyer, the George Holmes Distinguished University Professor of Physics at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), passed away on 22 March 2022. He was a nationally and internationally recognized leader in magnetism and the magnetic materials community. Dave served as chairman of the American Physical Society’s Topical Group on Magnetism and its Applications from 2001–03. He became an International Advisory Committee member of the Rare-earth Permanent Magnets Workshop in 2016.

At UNL beginning in 1972, Dave made a profound impact on the university and condensed matter physics/materials science in a number of roles: faculty, department chair, and center founder/director among them. Foremost, he was the founding director of the Center for Materials Research and Analysis, which later became the Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience (NCMN). As director from 1988 until 2019, he established a set of central facilities in materials fabrication and characterization that laid the groundwork for future materials research at UNL. This foundation, and Dave’s international reputation in magnetic materials, ultimately led to UNL winning an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, which Dave directed. Dave was instrumental in obtaining NIST funding for a new building to house the NCMN core facilities. Following this, Dave successfully created the Nebraska Nanoscale Facility, an NSF-funded National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure site. Dave’s legacy lives on in what he built.

A native of Monee, Illinois, Dave was born on 28 September 1938, the only son among the four children of Marcus and Della Sellmyer. In high school, Dave was a three-sport athlete in basketball, football, and baseball, and he found time to play trumpet in band. For college, Dave went 100 miles down the road to the University of Illinois, where he received his undergraduate degree in engineering physics in 1960. Here he also met Catherine Zakas, whom he married in 1962, starting a family that would eventually include three children and 10 grandchildren. After the University of Illinois, Dave went to graduate school at Michigan State University, where his PhD work focused on determining the Fermi surface of AuSn, under the guidance of Peter A. Schroeder. This topic, too, was his first in the more than 650 refereed journal papers he authored spanning at least 57 years.

After receiving his PhD, Dave spent seven years at MIT, first as an assistant professor and then as associate professor. In 1972 the heartland beckoned, and he began his long career at UNL. Dave was known as the “Guru” in magnetism. His expertise included both fundamental magnetism and the applications of magnetic materials. Dave’s research on magnetism spans a wide range of different topics from amorphous materials and nanostructures to novel magnets and, more recently, quantum materials. In the 1970s and early 1980s, his group’s work on rare earth–iron glasses helped lay the groundwork for the discovery of RE-Fe-B permanent magnet materials. He also made significant contributions to nanocomposite magnets and understanding the exchange-spring phenomena, high temperature Sm–Co magnets, and rare earth–free magnets (Hf–Co, Zr–Co, and FeCoTi₂). His work on nanostructured FePt has had a significant impact on the magnetic recording world. Dave’s most important work was the use of cluster deposition (a nonequilibrium fabrication technique) to obtain novel clusters with unique and interesting properties much different than in bulk. His significant discoveries included alloys of T₅Si₃ (T=Fe, Si) and Co₃Si. Dave’s group was also the first to discover a “quantum phase transition” to ferromagnetic order in melt-spun Co1+xSn alloys. Dave continued to further the science of magnetism to the end, still working on funded research projects and supervising graduate students.

Dave’s numerous contributions to the magnetism community have been recognized nationally and internationally. He served on countless advisory panels and committees convened by professional organizations and funding agencies, with particular impact on the American Physical Society’s Topical Group on Magnetism and its Applications, and provided more than 100 invited review talks on various topics within magnetism. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he received the Outstanding Research and Creativity Award from the University of Nebraska, the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Iketani Science and Technology Foundation for his work in permanent magnetism, and the Louise Pound–George Howard Distinguished Career Award from UNL. He mentored about 100 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers as well as countless other young researchers and junior faculty. A giant in the field of magnetism and magnetic materials, Dave’s graciousness, humbleness, and kindness will be missed more than his knowledge and experience.