Obituary of George Curriden Baldwin

Theoretical and experimental physicist and educator Dr. George C. Baldwin passed away on 23 January 2010 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after a long illness.

Born in Denver, Colorado, on 5 May 1917, George earned a BS in physics from Kalamazoo College in 1939 and a PhD in physics from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1943. He continued at Illinois teaching college-level physics to GIs in the Army Specialized Training Program during WWII.

In 1944 George joined the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, beginning a 23-year career in industrial research and development. Much of his early work was in perfecting the GE Research Laboratory 100 MeV Betatron for use as an x ray source for industrial and scientific applications. In the late 1940s Baldwin and Klaiber used bremsstrahlung from the betatron beam to excite uranium nuclei and observed a prominent peak in the cross section for photons of about 20 MeV. This “giant resonance” was subsequently observed in other nuclei and was explained theoretically by several renowned physicists, including Teller and Goldhaber. George also contributed experimentally and theoretically to GE developments of commercial synchrotrons. In 1958-1959 George directed the Argonaut Research Reactor facility at Argonne National Laboratory, conducting neutron measurements and developing operational procedures and operator training. Returning to the GE Advanced Technology Laboratory in Schenectady, he conducted cutting-edge research in low-energy electron scattering in noble gases, extending the scattering cross-section data to well under 1 eV, which was an extension of the state-of-the-art at the time.

Together with GE colleagues, George conceived in 1962 the nuclear radiation analogue of the optical laser, known as Gamma-Ray Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (GRASER). As he pursued this theoretical concept, he successfully launched international efforts to define and quantify issues facing the development of this advanced idea. He worked closely with many colleagues, from Russia to Los Alamos, to open and explore an entire new field of laser physics and made bold, creative attempts to bring the concept to fruition physically.

George left GE to join Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a Professor of Nuclear Engineering in 1967 and retired in 1977 as Professor Emeritus. He taught undergraduate and graduate courses in nuclear engineering, carried out an active research program on electron scattering in gases, and continued the development of the GRASER. George established a joint research effort with colleagues in the USSR in the areas of nonlinear optics and the GRASER, an intermittent collaboration that continued some 35 years.

Dating from the early 1950s, George had many interactions and collaborations with Los Alamos National Laboratory, the most protracted of which concerned the GRASER. In 1975, while still with RPI, he presented a colloquium at Los Alamos on the GRASER, which evoked interest from many quarters and led to a sabbatical leave at Los Alamos the following year. After retiring from RPI in 1977, George joined Los Alamos to help build a GRASER research program and continue other advanced research. George worked on methods for detecting nuclear stimulated emission without actual gamma-ray lasing, seeking to demonstrate coherent emission from nuclear states. On exhaustive theoretical grounds, he established that a number of innovative ideas were unworkable in pursuit of this goal. He and his colleagues were able to identify interdisciplinary criteria necessary to the process of laser action at gamma-ray energies. He collaborated on theoretical issues, on experiments to demonstrate laser isomer separation, and computer modeling of GRASER kinetics. George continued publishing well past his retirement in 1987. He summarized and evaluated decades of GRASER work, including his own, in Reviews of Modern Physics v. 53, 687 (1981) and v. 69, 1085 (1997).

George authored two books, “An Introduction to Nonlinear Optics” (1969) and a memoir, “The Science Was Fun: Selected Recollections of a Life in Science” (2006). An avid amateur astronomer, fisherman, self-taught pianist, and historical researcher, one of George’s most notable accomplishments was locating an inscription left by the 1776 Escalante expedition, discovered originally in 1884 by his father on a surveying expedition in northern Arizona. George recounted the story in an article for the Journal of the Southwest (Summer 1999).

George enjoyed a 57-year marriage to his beloved wife Winnie, who predeceased him by only a few months. He is survived by three children and seven grandchildren — three of his offspring with college degrees in physics.

Although the dream of an operational, coherent gamma-ray source has outlived George, his pioneering efforts, dedicated tenacity, and tireless leadership stand as monuments to his work ethics and physical insights.