Obituary of Roger Bruce Perkins

Nuclear physicist, mentor and laboratory leader, Roger Bruce Perkins died on July 11, 2008 at his home in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Perkins was born November 8, 1935 in Hammond, Indiana. He graduated in June, 1955, with a B.S. in physics from the University of Wisconsin, where he developed an interest in nuclear physics while working under the direction of H. H. Barschall. He went to graduate school at Princeton, where he received his Ph.D. in physics in 1959 while working with Val Fitch at the Palmer Physical Laboratory. His thesis was on the polarization of mu-mesons from K-meson decay.

Roger Perkins spent the summers of 1955 and 1956 at the Physics (P) Division of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in the mountains of New Mexico; the first summer in the group (P-3) working with small van de Graaff accelerators doing neutron scattering experiments and the second summer working at the large van de Graaff accelerator (P-9) facility.

Roger returned to Los Alamos after he completed his graduate work and was persuaded by Division Leader J. M. B. Kellogg to rejoin the Physics Division. He was again in P-9. These were very productive years where Roger collaborated with James Simmons in studies of nucleon–nucleon interactions that led to many publications and invitations to national and international physics conferences.

In 1964 Richard Taschek, who had taken over the Physics Division Leadership, formed a team of senior researchers reporting directly to him. Roger was in that select group, with brief interludes away, until Taschek tapped him to be the Alternate Division Leader in the late 1960s.

In 1964–65 Perkins was posted to the AEC Nuclear, Atomic and Classical Physics Branch of the AEC Division of Research in Washington, DC, working under Division Director Paul McDaniel.

The division at Los Alamos that was responsible for the design of thermonuclear weapons ran into some difficulty in the late 1960s and Perkins volunteered to help them trouble shoot their program. In just a few months he was able to make a significant contribution that greatly benefitted the division.

Roger Perkins was invited by David Lind and William Love of the University of Colorado Department of Physics and Astrophysics to spend the 1969–1970 academic year at the Boulder, Colorado, campus to teach and to work with their sector-focused cyclotron.

Perkins remained as Alternate Physics Division leader under Division Leader Hank Motz until the mid 1970s when he was asked by Laboratory Director Harold Agnew to lead the Laser Division. Roger skillfully guided the division through the late 1970s during a time of great progress at Los Alamos.

In addition to being an outstanding scientist Roger Perkins was a talented administrator. As a result he was tapped in 1980 to join the director’s senior staff to participate in the overall leadership of the Laboratory. He was so good and so successful at this that he was never able to return to the hands-on research that shaped his early career. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Roger played a major role in guiding the overall operation of Los Alamos from a number of directorates.

He retired in 1997, but continued as a consultant until he was too ill to continue.

Throughout his career Roger Perkins has been an inspiration, a mentor and friend to both scientists and administrators at Los Alamos. Many of his protégés have gone on to successful careers in academia, government and industry.

Perkins is survived by his wife Betty and three grown daughters.