Obituary of Stavros Fallieros

After graduating from the University of Athens and serving in the Greek army, Stavros was awarded a two-year CERN fellowship at the Niels Bohr Institute. In 1955 he came to the University of Maryland for graduate studies, earning his PhD in nuclear theory with Richard Ferrell in 1959, and staying on for another year as a research associate.

Following 9 years at the Bartol Research Foundation, he joined the Brown University Physics Department as a Professor of Physics, retiring in 1995. His research, for which he received international recognition, ranged over various areas of nuclear theory, including collective phenomena (some studies of which he pioneered), photon- and electron- scattering-induced excitations, and the roles of gauge and relativistic invariance in nuclear phenomena.

Stavros was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Principal Investigator on various US contracts and grants for many years. He was also a Visiting Professor at universities in the USA, Canada, France and Germany, and a research visitor at Brookhaven and MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Studies.

Although reasearch took up much of his time, he never stinted when it came to teaching, rapidly becoming one of the best teachers in the Department. He taught for several years into retirement, during which time he continued to receive accolades from students. Former colleagues still dip into the marvelous sets of homework problems he created for the graduate and undergraduate courses he taught. Along with his publications, those sets, many of which are now located in the Department’s library, will serve as a memorial to him.

He is survived by three daughters, four grandchildren and his brother, and will be missed by all those who knew and admired him.