Michael Wulf Friedlander
Michael Wulf Friedlander, an accomplished astrophysicist and author of books on science for the lay audience, died on 29 April 2021 in St. Louis at age 92.
Born 15 November 1928 in Cape Town, South Africa, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Cape Town and a PhD from the University of Bristol, England. In August 1956 he joined the department of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, and he remained there throughout his career.
In 1954 and 1955, while at Bristol, he published with MGK Menon the discovery of the beta decay of the kaon, the first precision measurement of the mass of the lambda-zero hyperon, and several other papers documenting production, decay, and interactions of elementary particles in nuclear emulsions. After arriving at Washington University he turned his attention to nuclear-emulsion studies from high-altitude balloons of the element composition of the light cosmic rays. During the late 1960s, in collaboration with graduate students and WU colleagues Joseph Klarmann and Robert M. Walker, he did pathbreaking early work studying the very rare ultra-heavy cosmic rays with atomic number greater than 26. This work used high-altitude balloon flights of many square meters of nuclear emulsion and plastic track detectors. In addition to publishing on cosmic rays in major physics journals, Friedlander wrote two books on the subject aimed at a general audience: Cosmic Rays (Harvard University Press, 1990) and A Thin Cosmic Rain: Particles from Outer Space (Harvard University Press, 2000).
In addition to pursuing basic research in physics and astrophysics, Friedlander was interested in and participated in the interface between science and society. He published two books on the subject, The Conduct of Science (Prentice-Hall, 1972) and At the Fringes of Science (Westview Press, 1998; reprinted and expanded, Routledge, 2018). He was an active member of the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information. This Committee carried out the Baby Tooth Survey in which school children and their “tooth fairy” parents were encouraged to submit baby teeth along with information on the child’s date of birth, where the mother had lived during pregnancy, and where the child had lived during infancy. Initial results from analysis of the collected teeth were published in Science in 1961. The report demonstrated that teeth from children living down-wind of the US bomb-test location and born in 1954 had about three times the concentration of radioactive strontium-90 as those from children born in 1951 or 1952. These data contributed to the 1963 adoption of the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere.
Throughout his career at Washington University, Friedlander was active in and took leadership roles in faculty governance at the university and at the national level through the American Association of University Professors.
His interest in public understanding of science led him to establish in 1994 the Saturday Science series of lectures aimed at the general public. He coordinated talks by colleagues and himself on a wide array of physics and other science topics. Saturday Science typically drew about 150 people from the general community. He continued to organize these lectures until he had to withdraw in 2015 due to failing health. Today this series continues uninterrupted under other faculty of the WU physics department, a tribute to Friedlander’s vision and leadership.
