Leonard Liebermann

Leonard Liebermann age 100, Physicist and Inventor

Leonard Liebermann, an emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California at San Diego and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, passed away in his home at age 100 on January 8, 2016. He was known for his studies of sound propagation in solids and liquids and for his experimental investigations of ferromagnetism, which revealed unusual phenomena associated with thin films and surfaces. During World War II and into the Cold War era, his work on underwater sound made a significant contribution to submarine detection and led to a life-long interest in sound propagation and attenuation in sea water. As an early faculty member at the University of California at San Diego, Liebermann also played an important administrative role in attracting such notable faculty members as Nobel Laureates Harold Urey, Joseph and Maria Mayer, and Walter Kohn.

Leonard Liebermann was born in 1915 in Ironwood, Michigan, an Upper Peninsula mining town where his immigrant father was a prosperous haberdasher. However, the family lost its business during the Great Depression and subsequently moved to Chicago, where they eked out a modest living. Only with the aid of a full scholarship was Liebermann able to attend the undergraduate and graduate programs at the University of Chicago, where he received a PhD in physics in 1940. After holding teaching positions at both Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Liebermann went to the Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography in order to join the war effort. After the war, he moved to Marine Physical Laboratory in Point Loma (California), and in 1955 he joined the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Subsequently, he became a professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego, where he helped to establish the new campus. In addition to his academic duties there, he was an organizer of the JASON workshops, which gave the Defense Department a venue for consulting with distinguished physicists on issues of national security. These wellknown meetings met in La Jolla during multiple summers, starting in the 1960’s.

Around 1974, Liebermann took early retirement. He maintained his association with UCSD but began work on a series of inventions for practical instruments such as a refrigerant gas leak detector utilizing a sensor employing a corona discharge phenomenon. This design is now very important in protecting the ozone layer and reducing global warming. Addional notable instruments were a battery condition tester utilizing low load current for testing automobile batteries. These and Liebermann’s many other patented inventions are now standard diagnostic instruments in the air-conditioning, refrigeration, electrical and automotive industries. These devices were sold by a company that he established along with his son and brother and that had over 400 employees before it was bought by a larger company.

Liebermann is survived by two daughters (Kathryn Levin and Debora Presser) and a son (Elliot Gerard), as well as five grandchildren and six great grandchildren.