Obituary of Thomas Allen Green

Thomas Allen Green was born on March 21, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio. He received his education in Cleveland and lived for many years in Albuquerque, NM, where he was on the scientific staff at Sandia National Laboratories. He died on October 23, 2008, at La Vida Llena retirement community in Albuquerque.

After serving as a Navy radar technician in the Pacific during World War II, he completed his undergraduate studies in Physics at The Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland (which later became a part of the Case Western Reserve University). After winning an Albert Gallatin fellowship to study at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, he started his studies there in 1946, first under the tutorial of Prof. Jean Weiglé with whom he published a short note on the Moiré effect (Helvetica Physica Acta 21, 217 (1948)), and then he continued under the supervision of Prof. Ernst C.G. Stueckelberg with whom he published an important paper “Elimination of arbitrary constants in the relativistic theory of quanta (Helvetica Physica Acta 24, 153 (1951) and he obtained his PhD in theoretical Physics from the University of Geneva in 1950. While in Geneva, he became very interested in mountaineering and did a number of difficult climbs on the face of the Salève, in nearby France, a well known training ground for rock climbing experts.

After completing his formal studies, he became an instructor at Columbia University where he was involved in atomic physics research dealing with scattering cross sections. He then became in 1954 a professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. Several of his former students remember him as an outstanding and innovative teacher. During this period he also published a long paper co‑authored with M.E. Rose on nuclear structure effects in internal conversion (Phys. Rev. 110, 105 (1958)), a paper started during his years at Columbia University. In 1963 he moved to Albuquerque, NM, where he became a member of the research staff at Sandia National Laboratories to conduct basic research that included scattering theory for low energy atom‑atom collisions, a subject which resulted in a number of publications and collaborations throughout his career. His research on the theory of charge‑exchange collisions was particularly well received and he was then elected a Fellow of The American Physical Society. At a later stage, he collaborated at Sandia with a group on condensed matter physics where he developed a theory for understanding electron‑stimulated desorption from alkali halides (Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 1781 (1986)). He retired from Sandia in 1990, but continued thinking about atomic physics. While courageously fighting cancer (mesothelioma) and with limited eyesight, he persevered until his death at the age of 83 with the preparation and submission of a manuscript entitled “Method of perturbed stationary states re‑examined: Unique quantum translation factors in a many‑electron formulation”.

Physics and music were equally important to him. As a boy, he started by playing the piano, and then played the trombone as a young adult in orchestras and dance bands, including radio broadcasts, and even considered a career as a musician. He subsequently studied the string bass, playing with the Albuquerque Lesser Symphony Orchestra, and later studied the recorder and played with the University of New Mexico Early Music program, the Albuquerque Recorder Society and the Commodious Consort.

As a response to his diminishing eyesight from macular degeneration he developed a computer system enabling people with low vision to follow enlarged music on a laptop screen, using a foot pedal to advance through the score measure by measure. With the encouragement and longstanding support of David Goldstein of the National Resource Center for Blind Musicians, the details of this system are available to other musicians with low vision at www.blindmusicstudent.org .

Tom always retained a great fondness for his years in Geneva, where he made a number of long lasting friendships, and he loved to talk in french with the friends he made there. He also loved to recall the mountain excursions and musical experiences with his trombone teacher, which got him acquainted with members of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. His scientific insight was appreciated by many, yet he never quarreled with colleagues who had ideas opposite to his own.

With the passing of Thomas Green, we have lost a resourceful and clever physicist, and a uniquely multi‑faceted personality. We will miss him very much.