Obituary of Henry Horak (1919-2002)

Henry George Horak, a long time resident of Los Alamos, New Mexico and more recently living at The Woodmark in Albuquerque, New Mexico, passed away peacefully on October 11, 2011, after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri on March 26, 1919, the eldest of two children of Henry Robert and Leota Horak nee Gromer. He is predeceased by his brother Robert Joseph.

He is survived by his wife Gertrude and 3 sons: Lou, Karl, and Paul, their wives Kathleen, Carolyn, and Marcia, as well as 3 grandchildren Peter Tyrone Horak, Peter Cassidy Horak, and David Cassidy Horak.

Henry was a respected chess master, a pitcher for the Denver Bears in 1940, a captain in the Eighth Air Force during World War II, and an accomplished accordionist.

After the war he earned a PhD in astrophysics under Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar from the University of Chicago specializing in radiative transfer. He taught for 17 years as a professor at the University of Kansas. A summary of his work at KU may be found at http://www.physics.ku.edu/astronomy/history/horak.html. In 1967 he moved his family to Los Alamos, New Mexico where he worked at the national laboratory until his retirement at age 72.

More information: http://www.physics.ku.edu/astronomy/history/horak.html

Work Summary:

Dr. Horak had the privilege of working with a large number of students throughout his career at KU. Research topics and student names give some indication of his breadth of knowledge and interests.

R Scuti spectra: Robert Brownlee; The Emitting Atmosphere: Charles Lundquist; Light Curves and the Theory of Eclipsing Binaries: Robert Talley; Orbital Motion of an Artificial Earth-Satellite: Robert Sprague; Hydrodynamic Stability Problems: John Walton; Philosophy, Astrophysics, and Time’s Arrow: Donald Schumacher; Celestial Mechanics, Astrodynamics, and Computers: Kenneth Ford The Digital Computer at K.U.: Gale, Ganousek, Steve Little; Molecular Spectroscopy: James Hesser; Computation of Spectroscopic Binary Elements: Robert Wolfe; The Kansas Atlas of Stellar Spectra: Frank Younger; The Ross Spectrograph Capabilities: Edwin Barker; Photometer Electronics: William Galinaitis; Lunar Photometry and Libration: Ted. V. Smith; Hansen’s Method for Absolute Perturbations: Maxwell Sandford; Multiple Periodicities. Wayne Fullerton; A Myriad of Galaxies and Cataloging Them: Harold Corwin; Stellar Dynamics: Jack Hills; Hydrodynamics and Combustion: Lawrence Cloutman; The Theory of Visual Binaries: Edward Sion; Degenerate Matter: James Liebert; Binary Stars: Paul Etzel. Most of his work at LANL remains classified, but at least one paper is now in the public domain. See http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/07.pdf for a glimpse into his work at the National Lab.