Jan Francis Herbst

Jan Francis Herbst, retired principal research scientist and manager at the General Motors Research and Development Center, passed away on 21 January 2025 near his home in Sedona, Arizona.

Born on 1 May 1947 in Tucson, Arizona, Jan obtained his BA and MS degrees in physics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. Under John Wilkins, he earned his PhD in theoretical physics at Cornell University in 1974.

After a National Research Council postdoc at the National Bureau of Standards and a short stay at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Jan joined General Motors in 1977 where he spent the rest of his career. Starting as a research physicist, he became group leader, section manager and principal research scientist.

Much of Jan’s research focused on rare-earth materials, which have both fundamental interest and are important for permanent magnets used in General Motors vehicles. He led a program aimed at the discovery and development of novel hard magnet materials. One hallmark of that research was the discovery of Nd₂Fe₁₄B, a previously unknown ternary compound that is replacing SmCo₅ as the world’s premier hard-magnet material. His other activities included research on a new class of magnetoelastic materials, namely, magnetostrictive composites, and work on materials for hydrogen storage.

Jan gave many invited talks, and with collaborators he published more than 120 papers and had 19 patents. Among other awards, he received the International Prize for New Materials from the American Physical Society, in 1986 for research on rare earth-iron-boron materials, which led to the discovery of a new class of permanent magnets.

Jan was a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He served on the Nominating Committee and was Secretary-Treasurer of the Division of Condensed Matter Physics.

On a personal note, two of us (Kukkonen and Albers) were also students of John Wilkins at Cornell and became close friends when Wilkins took the three of us students to Copenhagen, Denmark and Goteborg, Sweden on his sabbatical. The international experience was fantastic, and we got to attend the Nobel Symposium in 1973 that included 10 past and future Nobel Prize winners.

Jan was at General Motors, and I (Kukkonen) was at Ford. We kept in contact even after our physical paths diverged. After 40 years in engineering and research management, Jan helped me get back into theoretical physics by patiently listening to my arguments, giving advice, and even proofreading my papers.

Having known Jan since graduate school, I (Albers) will always remember his air of quiet, serious competence, combined with a calm optimism and an amused twinkle in his eyes. He was a delight to work with and to be around. He will be sadly missed.

For more than 30 years, I (Pinkerton) had the privilege of working with Jan at General Motors, most of that time with Jan as my immediate manager. You’ll not find a better friend, colleague, collaborator, and leader. We spent many memorable lunchtime walks engaged in lively discussions of physics, family, philosophy, and current events.

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