Richard Strombotne

Richard L. “Dick” Strombotne was born in Watertown, South Dakota, on 6 May 1933 to Cecil Lamar Strombotne and Dorothy Mae Richards. Dick died on 25 August 2020 in Rockville, Maryland, after a long illness.

Dick lived a prosperous and fulfilling life, made significant contributions to the greater good of the American society as a federal government employee at NIST and the Department of Transportation, was an active and vital member of the National Association of Retired Federal Employees (NARFE), and was a member of the Maryland NARFE, where he served as president and treasurer.

Dick graduated from Pomona College (BA, 1955) in Claremont, California, and earned his doctorate in physics at the University of California, Berkeley (MA 1957, PhD 1962), in RF spectroscopy. He joined the staff of the Radio Standards Laboratory (National Bureau of Standards, now NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, in 1961 to conduct research in microwave spectroscopy of ionized helium. In the field of nuclear magnetic resonance he published “Longitudinal Nuclear Spin-Spin Relaxation” with his research adviser Erwin Hahn in the March 1964 Physical Review journal of the American Physical Society (APS). This work reported a new resonance phenomenon, later cited as Strombotne–Hahn oscillations. In 1968 Dick transferred to the US Department of Transportation in Washington, DC, where he served in the Office of the Secretary. In 1977 he transferred to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, where he was responsible for fuel economy standards, motor vehicle safety regulation, and R&D until his retirement in 1996.

After his retirement, Dick saw the need to bring together senior physicists who, like himself, wanted to continue staying professionally active and enjoy the company of their colleagues. In 1997 he helped create the APS Mid-Atlantic Senior Physicist Group, which he proudly led until 2019, when health issues prevented him from keeping up with the duties of the presidency. As a member of the Senior Executives Association, a group that advocates the interests of career federal executives, Dick introduced legislation to allow a spouse of a deceased federal employee to retain a portion of their pension through the Thrift Savings Plan; the legislation was passed by Congress and enacted in June 2009.

While living in Boulder from 1962 to 1968, Dick and his wife Martha were active participants as Scout Leaders with their children in the Longs Peak Council of the Boy Scouts of America. In 1978, after living in Bethesda, Maryland, for 10 years and raising four children, they moved to Clarksburg, Maryland, renovated a 100-year-old farm house, and on 10 acres cultivated and grew zinnias that were delivered in the family station wagon to commercial DC florists and supplied to the White House for special events. In 2001 Dick and Martha moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland, where they continued to travel extensively throughout the world, enjoyed many great adventures, and remained actively involved in local and state politics and organizations. Dick was a long-standing member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, APS, the Society of Automotive Engineers, the American Association for Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Dick will be greatly missed by his family and friends and his many colleagues.