Obituary of Edward Bilpuch (1927-2012)

Edward George Bilpuch died on September 15, 2012, in Durham, North Carolina. He was the Henry W. Newson Professor Emeritus of physics at Duke University, and he served many years as the director of the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL). Bilpuch, a gifted experimentalist, used high-resolution spectroscopy to probe the structure of the nucleus. Bilpuch was born in 1927 in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, and after a stint in the Navy earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He joined the faculty at Duke in 1962.

In the 1960s, perhaps the most exciting topic in nuclear physics was the discovery of isobaric analogue states in the nucleus by John Fox and Donald Robson at Florida State University. In revealing this phenomenon, Fox and Robson were able to achieve an energy resolution of 2 keV in their measurements. While speaking at a symposium in honor of Bilpuch this November, Robson recalled: “We needed a truly high resolution. Ed wanted to use the high resolution system at Duke to shoot protons.” Henry Newson, the first director of TUNL, had developed a high-resolution neutron beam, and Bilpuch had the idea to adapt the system to use a proton beam to study isobaric analogue states. In a seminal experiment, Bilpuch and his student George (Jay) Keyworth did just this, achieving an energy resolution of 0.25 keV—the best resolution achieved in a nuclear-structure experiment in the world. Their groundbreaking experiment established that within the analogue states observed by Fox and Robson there were many narrow compound nuclear states. “It was beautiful data,” Robson said.

When this data was presented at a conference in Tallahassee in 1966, the British nuclear physicist Sir Denys Wilkinson, inventor of the analog-to-digital converter and recipient of the Royal Medal, summarized his reaction as follows: “In describing this Duke work, I would call it stupendously beautiful. I have never seen such an experiment before. It gave me an immediate sensual thrill.” Later, Bilpuch shifted his attention to the statistical behavior of the largest collection of proton resonances ever accumulated. Work by James Rainwater had strongly suggested that random matrix theory could be used to describe the experimental width and spacing distributions. Bilpuch and colleagues proved this was the case by their successful description of the proton resonance data in a different mass region.

Teamwork was an important theme in Bilpuch’s life. He attended UNC on a football scholarship, and played in three major bowl games—the Cotton, Sugar, and Orange Bowls. As a physicist, he promoted teamwork among scientists, among institutions, and among countries. He realized that although individual talents are important, much more can be accomplished through collaboration than by an individual. He helped establish TUNL, a cooperative nuclear laboratory at Duke run jointly by Duke, UNC, and NC State, and helped transform it from a regional lab into an internationally respected center for nuclear physics. He was deputy director of TUNL from 1966 to 1978, and director from 1978 to 1992. Throughout his career, Bilpuch fostered international collaborations. He maintained a friendship and working relationship with Walter Greiner, professor of physics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University and founding director of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, who said that the multi-institutional model of TUNL was one of the inspirations for reaching out to institutions in Germany in establishing the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in 1969. Bilpuch was also one of the first scientists at Duke to collaborate with physicists in China. Haiyan Gao, the current Henry W. Newson Professor of physics and department chair at Duke, said that as an undergraduate in China, she was familiar with TUNL.

According to Bilpuch’s former students, he created an atmosphere of teamwork and possibility in the lab. John Browne, who earned his PhD at Duke in 1969 said, “Ed would encourage you to take chances. It was a can-do time. I think all of us took that attitude with us when we left.” Browne was the director at LANL before retiring. “I’ve had a great career,” he said. “And that would not have been possible without Ed’s support.” Keyworth, who earned his PhD at Duke in 1968 and worked with Bilpuch on the high-resolution spectroscopy experiment, said, “Ed and [his wife] Marilyn had no children, but an extended family of graduate students. I was Ed’s first graduate student. When I left Duke, I felt ready to take on the world.” Keyworth was the director of the Physics Division at LANL, and also served as President Ronald Reagan’s science advisor. “Ed made you feel that he believed in you,” he recalled. “What I learned from Ed was the sheer joy of discovery and exploratory research as well as the patience needed to get there.” Bilpuch understood deeply the connection between technology and scientific exploration, and he helped create an environment at TUNL that encouraged scientific creativity and technical innovation. His legacy will be his belief that if you can improve the technology, you can almost always make new contributions to physics. Calvin Howell Duke University Durham, North Carolina Gary Mitchell North Carolina State University Raleigh, North Carolina