Edward James Ludwig

Ed Ludwig passed away at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on 7 September 2018, several years after learning of his chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Born the youngest of three brothers in Bronx, New York, to Helen E. Ludwig and Daniel U. Ludwig, Ed graduated from the Bronx High School of Science at age 16. Ed went on to obtain his undergraduate degree in physics at Fordham University and his PhD in experimental nuclear physics at Indiana University in 1963, under the direction of Daniel W. Miller. After a postdoctoral research position at Rutgers University, in 1966 Ed joined the physics faculty at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, where he remained for the rest of his career.

Ed was UNC’s first experimentalist to use the new tandem Van de Graaff accelerator at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) located at Duke University, where he later became associate director. There he led the design and construction of unique scattering chambers, detection systems, and nuclear polarimeters that he and many others used in extensive studies of nuclear polarization phenomena in low-energy charged particle scattering and reactions. Ed’s technical contributions supported extensive elastic scattering polarization analyzing power measurements, leading to a substantially refined global nucleon optical model potential; high-resolution studies of weak nuclear resonances to understand isospin and isobar components in light nuclei; and transfer reaction studies to measure D-state amplitudes in ground-state wavefunctions of light nuclei. He also led construction of a simple “mini-tandem” acceleration system to implement similar studies with unpolarized and polarized proton and deuteron beam studies below 500 keV.

These investigations attracted many international collaborators to join Ed’s group at TUNL for experiments, from labs at Tsukuba, Köln, Birmingham, Erlangen, Lisbon, and München. In turn, Ed and his graduate students joined these and other collaborators to use unique accelerator facilities at Princeton, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Florida State, and München.

During his 37 years at UNC, Ed was an admired and respected teacher, adviser, and mentor to at least 40 students who were his closest collaborators on experiments at TUNL. He was also a master at using simple classroom demonstrations of basic physics principles in his large introductory classes. Thousands of undergraduates enrolled in these classes or met with him in his 23-year role as a College of Arts & Sciences adviser. Beyond the classroom and lab, Ed also spearheaded frequent friendly, highly competitive “Neutrons” versus “Protons” team matches for students and colleagues, both on the tennis court and softball field.

Spending time with his loved ones was a very high priority for Ed. His favorite family gatherings with his wife, Helen, and their four children were weeklong summer vacations at the beach in North Carolina. He also led his son’s Cub Scout troop, coached youth basketball, and in retirement, tutored elementary school students and volunteered at the local botanical garden. His warmth, humor, inventiveness, and eagerness to confront physics problems were infectious. Those of us who knew him will miss him greatly.