Gerhard Baur

Gerhard Baur passed away on 16 June 2023 in Stuttgart, Germany, after a long and debilitating disease. He was a distinguished theorist working in nuclear reaction theory at the University of Basel in Switzerland.

Gerhard was born on 20 January 1944 in Stuttgart. In 1970 he earned his PhD from the University of Basel, with work on “Particle vibration coupling and the giant dipole resonance,” mentored by Kurt Alder. From 1971–74 he worked as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, and in 1974 he was hired as a guest scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. From 1975 to 2009 he had a very productive career as a senior scientist at the Jülich Research Center in Germany.

In 1982 Gerhard obtained his habilitation at the University of Basel. A habilitation in Switzerland serves as a formal qualification needed to become a university professor. Beginning in 1993 Gerhard acted as an Außerordentlicher (associate) professor at the University of Basel, a position he kept after retirement from his job at the Jülich Research Center in 2009. His research interests ranged from photon–hadron and photon–photon interactions in ultraperipheral relativistic heavy ion collisions, atomic physics with relativistic heavy ions, and indirect methods for nuclear astrophysics, such as the Coulomb dissociation and the Trojan Horse method.

Gerhard was nice, polite, and gentle with those he worked with. He was open-minded and willing to talk to and listen to many different types of people. He always believed that he could contribute to difficult problems in the physical sciences working with simple, but at the same time unique, ideas. And so, he did. Together with his PhD students, he envisioned that photon–photon and photonuclear collisions occurring in ultraperipheral relativistic heavy ion collisions would be one day a major research area in nuclear physics. And so, now, it is.

As a young scientist he liked to compete in sprint running. While working at the Jülich Research Center, he would separate a few hours per week to dedicate to athletics. Despite his small stature, he was a very fast sprinter. He enjoyed playing tennis and watching soccer games.

During his last years, while suffering from an extremely debilitating disease, he still found pleasure working as a referee for prestigious scientific journals such as Science, Nature, and the Physical Review. His love for physics and his attempts to understand the secrets of nature was a model example of dedication to science.

He is survived by his sister and brother, Marie-Luise and Klaus, and by his nephews and nieces. Gerhard is greatly missed. Your memory will be honored.

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