Obituary of Martin Perlman (1930-2013)

Martin Melvin (“Marty”) Perlman passed away from cardiovascular disease on 24 February, 2013, in Deerfield Beach, Florida. A groundbreaker in the field of electrets, charge storage and transport in electrically insulating solids, he was born in Montreal on 6 February, 1930. He graduated at the top of his class in 1946 from Baron Byng high school, following which he enrolled in honors mathematics and physics at McGill University. He obtained his B.Sc. in 1950 and the M.Sc. in physics in 1951. Newly married, Marty and wife Shirley moved to Ithaca, N.Y., where Marty took graduate courses in physics at Cornell University, taught by H. Bethe, P. Morrison, and other famous physicists.

Marty first wanted to become a meteorologist, but Professor John Stewart Foster (JSF) of McGill convinced him otherwise; he therefore undertook Ph.D. studies in radiation physics at McGill under JSF’s supervision. His thesis work, entitled “The breakdown of proton irradiated proteins”, was carried out using McGill’s cyclotron (later Foster Radiation Laboratory) and completed in 1955.

With JSF’s encouragement, Marty started teaching physics that same year, 6 months before completing his Ph.D., at the “Collège Militaire Royal de St.Jean” (CMR), where a position had opened. However, in 1956 the family moved to St. Joseph, MI (USA), where Marty accepted a job in industry (RCA Whirlpool Corp.). After 2½ years he realized that he preferred more fundamental research; CMR was delighted to have him back.

Marty spent a total of 36 years at CMR as an employee of the Canadian federal civil service (Department of National Defense, DND). At CMR, he was very active in the “Groupe de recherche sur les semiconducteurs et les diélectriques” (GRSD) which also included colleagues from the University of Sherbrooke. He was named Professor Emeritus at CMR in 1995, shortly before the college was closed for economic reasons and academic programs were moved to the Royal Military College of Canada, RMC, in Kingston, Ontario.

Much of Marty’s life work was devoted to the study of electrets, a topic on which he edited or co-edited three books (in 1968, 1973, published by The Electrochemical Society; and in 1979, “Charge Strorage, Charge Transport, and Electrostatics with their Applications”, co-edited with Y. Wada and H. Kokado, co-published by Elsevier, Amsterdam and by Kodansha, Tokyo). These books originated from the international symposia on electrets that he initiated, (co-)chaired and inspired – the symposia on “Electrets and Related Electrostatic Charge Storage Phenomena” (Chicago 1967) and on “Electrets, Charge Storage and Transport in Dielectrics” (Miami Beach 1972), as well as an international workshop in Kyoto 1978. Perlman was also providing guidance and inspiration to the international electret symposium held in São Carlos, Brazil in 1975 and to the ongoing series of “International Symposia on Electrets” (ISE), since 1985 under the auspices of the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS).

His research on electrets started with the study of carnauba wax in 1960, later shifting to synthetic polymers (polyethyleneterephthalate (PETP), polyvinylidenefluoride (PVDF), silicone resin, among others). It gave rise to several inventions, for example US patents 4,435,610 on “Electret semiconductor solar cell” (1985), and 5,254,296 on “Method to double the piezo- and pyroelectric (constants) of PVDF films” (1993). These more applied research activities led ca. 1968 to collaboration and consulting with Bell Northern Research (BNR, Ottawa, ON) and with James E. West of Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, N.J.). Marty spent one day each week at BNR in Ottawa over a period of many years, and several well-known papers were co-authored with BNR staff members C.W. Reedyk or R.A. Creswell. An early article, “Electrets – from freak to familiarity in 50 years” (with L.M. Baxt and D.E. Tilley) appeared in Physics Today 21, 99 (1968).

Most readers will recognize that this early work on electrets led to major commercial successes in the form of the electret microphone and electret filters; both of these technologies result in worldwide annual sales worth hundreds of millions of dollars to this day. Unfortunately, Marty had to give up his research for health reasons, and his last journal paper appeared in 1994.

Marty also spent time as a visiting scientist in various laboratories abroad, for example three months with Sergio Mascarenhas in São Carlos, Brazil (ca. 1970), and several multi-week visits with Jacques Lewiner’s group in Paris, among others. From his collaboration with Bernhard Gross in São Carlos originated a seminal paper on “Short-Circuit Currents in Charged Dielectrics and Motion of Zero-Field Planes” published in Journal of Applied Physics 43, 853–855 (1972). He hosted numerous post-graduate and post-doctoral researchers in his own laboratory at CMR, for example two of us (R.G. and S.S.B.), S. Unger, T.J. Sonnonstine, K.J. Kao, S. Haridoss, V. Gelfandbein, R. Nath, A. Kumar, to name just a few.

Among Marty’s many awards and honors were fellowships of the Institute of Physics (London, F.Inst.P, 1972), and of the American Physical Society (elected in 1978). He received “Distinguished Professor” awards at CMR over several years (1981-84; 1988), served on the boards of several learned societies, for example the National Academy of Sciences / National Research Council (NAS/NRC, Washington, 1978-80), and the IEEE DEIS (1981-84).

According to Shirley, Marty loved the “3 Fs” (family, food, fun), along with friends, partying, and Florida in his later years. He insisted on being simply “Marty” to all, and one of his favorite statements characterized him very well: “I loved physics so much that I felt I never worked a day in my life”. His only hobby, beside physics, was “tinkering”, mostly with electronics. Shirley and Marty have two children, Sheree and Harry, and a grandson, Alex. Marty was always full of new fundamental and applications-related ideas in his areas of physics research. He inspired many of us with his enthusiasm and his thoroughness in understanding and applying not only electrets, but also several other related phenomena. He will be sorely missed by his many friends and former collaborators world-wide.