Marc Hansen Ross

Marc Hansen Ross was born in Baltimore, Maryland on 24 December 1928 to William Ross and Tess Ross (Hansen), and was raised in New York and New England. Marc graduated (BS) from Queens College in 1948 and married Joan Drakert of Queens in 1949. He received his PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1952, specializing in theoretical particle physics under Bob Sachs. Marc died peacefully on 26 November 2017 at a home in Palo Alto, California, near his son’s family. A memorial service is planned for summer 2018 in Ann Arbor.

Early in his scientific career, Marc had NSF postdoctoral and senior fellowships (at Cornell and in Rome), and worked at Brookhaven and Argonne national laboratories. He was a professor of physics at Indiana University until joining the physics faculty of the University of Michigan in 1963, where he remained until his retirement in 2001. While at Michigan, he mentored more than 15 PhD candidates. He also directed the University of Michigan Residential College from 1974 to 1977.

The energy crises of the 1970s, particularly the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, made a deep impression on Marc. Marc and one of us (BW) were two out of a couple score of physicists worldwide who decided to shift the focus of their careers from fundamental physics to energy analysis, to see if they might find ways to make helpful contributions to solving the formidable environmental and security problems posed by business-as-usual energy technologies and strategies. Marc’s energy research and related activities, which are widely recognized as having been enormously effective in raising the level of public debates on energy issues of critical import, were a natural extension of his physics expertise. His prestige as a high-energy theoretical physicist related to his strong abilities as a phenomenologist—an approach that he adapted to his tackling of important energy issues, where he always insisted on giving close scrutiny to the empirical evidence.

Art Rosenfeld, in his short memoir The Art of Energy Efficiency, described a pivotal effort soon after the OPEC embargo. Rosenfeld wrote that along with Robert Socolow, he “decided on the spot to volunteer to organize a one month study [of energy efficiency] in the summer of 1974, if we could work that fast. Along with Marc Ross of the University of Michigan, we easily found financing from the National Science Foundation and the Federal Energy Agency, which was the predecessor to the Energy R&D Administration, which ultimately became the present Department of Energy.”

In his 2011 book, Powering the Dream: The History and Progress of Green Technology, author Alexis Madrigal observed: “Rosenfeld and his band of converted physicists including Berkeley’s Sam Berman and the University of Michigan’s Marc Ross burst onto the national political scene with analyses that showed how to save Americans money and barrels of oil. They were just in time.”

Empirically oriented activities by Marc that have had enormous impact on energy policy and the public debates that have shaped them include: the decoupling of basic materials use from GDP as societies become more affluent; the failure of real-world performance to match regulatory mandates relating to automotive air pollution; and the automotive safety/fuel-efficient motor vehicle nexus.

In the early 1980s the mechanism of decoupling increasing energy use from increasing economic activity was completely unknown to the formal energy/economy modelers, who assumed historical trends in projecting future industrial energy use. BW experienced both the joy of exploring with Marc the extent to which the notion of energy/GDP decoupling in the industrial sector is statistically important (as it turned out to be) and the frustration of proving this, because of the enormous amount of data collection and analysis that was required.

Marc’s work in the 1990s demonstrated the enormous potential to improve the fuel efficiency of internal combustion engine vehicles. In the 2000s, he brought basic principles of physics to the debate over strengthening Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. His powerful statistical analysis demonstrated that, contrary to widespread belief in the community of politicians and the general public, SUVs are not inherently safer than conventional cars, including compact and subcompact cars. Marc’s work caught the attention of Congress, where he testified on the implications of his results. He thereby helped set the stage for the first increase in the standards in 30 years in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

Marc enjoyed a long association with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). Marc served on the ACEEE board from 1980 until 2005, and as board member, served as ACEEE’s first research director. The ACEEE issued a memorial tribute to Marc, remembering him as “a beloved giant in the energy efficiency community who made a significant and lasting impact. … Marc’s legacy in energy efficiency lives on today in the work of ACEEE and many others in the efficiency community.”

In 2004 the American Physical Society honored Marc with the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award, in recognition of “his rigorous, elegant, fearless, and influential analyses of the automobile’s energy use, emissions, and crashworthiness that have inspired two generations of policy physicists.”

Through the culmination of his career, Marc continued to find new opportunities for physicist-generalists, using his powerful intuition to show how conventional wisdom is often wrong on important energy-related issues.

Marc travelled extensively throughout his life, including to Rome, India, and China. He loved the great outdoors, especially hiking in the wilderness, and good food and song, especially Mozart. He was a longtime friend and supporter of the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. On his retirement, Marc gave each grandchild a copy of Our Energy, Regaining Control (1981), which he coauthored with BW. This book was, for him, the best symbol of his lifelong effort.