Keith Marlow

Keith W. Marlow, a veritable giant in the field of radiation detection and national security, passed away at his home in Grand Junction, Colorado, on 1 July 2019.

Born in a small Kansas town in 1928, Keith graduated from Sterling High School in 1946. He enrolled at Sterling College that same year and then transferred two years later to Kansas State College, where he graduated with a BS in physics in 1951.

Keith joined the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in 1952, beginning his first illustrious career, in nuclear physics and radiation detection. That was a busy year, as Keith was shipped off to Nevada almost immediately to participate in his first above-ground test of a nuclear device. According to Keith, the goal of that test was simply to prepare the diagnostics for Project Ivy, a series of nuclear tests in which he participated in the fall of the same year at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

In 1955 Keith became the third person in the country to be granted a nuclear reactor operator’s license. He assisted in the design and construction of NRL’s research reactor, and he was the first person to bring the reactor to criticality on 7 September 1956. He managed the reactor department at NRL for the next 15 years, until the reactor was decommissioned in 1970. During that time, while working full time at NRL, Keith earned his PhD in physics from the University of Maryland at College Park, with his dissertation on “The radioactive decay of Se-83.”

While working with Naval Intelligence in the 1970s, Keith devoted himself to improving the usability of detectors for high-resolution gamma spectroscopy. The top of the field at the time was lithium-drifted germanium detectors, which worked well enough but had the disadvantage of having to constantly be kept cooled to liquid-nitrogen temperatures even while not in use. With funding from ARPA, Keith acquired large samples of high-purity germanium and invited three research labs to attempt turning the material into a usable detector. The winner of that competition was Princeton Gamma Tech, which was awarded the first patent for the closed-in coaxial high-purity germanium (HPGe) detector. The community now had a high-resolution detector that could be stored at room temperature and cooled to liquid-nitrogen temperatures only when needed to acquire data. To analyze spectra from the new detector, Keith and his colleague Gary Phillips developed HYPERMET, an algorithm for the “automatic analysis of gamma-ray spectra from germanium detectors.” Today, 50 years later, the HPGe detector is still the leader in high-resolution gamma spectroscopy and a critical instrument in every gamma-spectroscopy laboratory.

Keith had many more successes at NRL until he retired for the first time in 1984 and began his second career at Sandia National Laboratories. While at Sandia, he worked on a multitude of projects related to radiation detection and national security. When the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was signed in 1987, Keith was appointed to the Special Verification Commission charged with working out the memorandum of agreement (MOA) regarding the implementation of the verification provisions of the treaty. That MOA was signed in December 1989, and Keith was among the first group of inspectors that visited the USSR the following year.

For his work and contributions to our nation, Keith was awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion in 2000, for “sustained, superior performance of duty of high value that distinctly benefits the interest of the United States and is directly related to the mission of the Intelligence Community.” Keith retired for the second time in 2012, concluding a career that spanned 60 years of service and nuclear science.

In 2016 Keith and Betty, his wife of 66 years and mother to their three children, moved to Grand Junction. Keith and Betty loved the outdoors, so the beauty of the Grand Valley suited them well.

Keith Marlow was a good man, a great scientist, and a patient mentor. His contributions, those that are known and those that may still be classified, will continue to strengthen our country’s national security and advance our knowledge of radiation detection and nuclear physics for years to come.