Thomas Trueman

Thomas Laurence (“Larry”) Trueman, Senior Physicist Emeritus at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), passed away peacefully at his home in Shoreham, New York, on 30 August 2019.

Larry was born in Media, Pennsylvania, on 24 September 1935. He attended Dartmouth College, where he obtained his BA in 1957. In 1962 he obtained his PhD under the supervision of Richard Dalitz at the University of Chicago. Larry came to BNL in Upton, New York, as a research associate in 1962. As a young assistant physicist in the mid 1960s, he had already established himself as a key member of the theory group, mentoring several postdocs. Early on, Larry gained recognition as one the world’s leading experts on spin physics, starting with his influential paper, coauthored with Gian Carlo Wick, on spin dependence of amplitudes related by crossing. Physics of spin remained a main interest in Larry’s research throughout his career.

Moving through the ranks at BNL, Larry was appointed senior physicist in 1974 and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1976. He led and helped build the high-energy theory group at BNL from 1974 to 1981, followed by a five-year term as the deputy chair of the physics department. He was the first associate laboratory director for high-energy and nuclear physics at BNL, 1988–91. Most of his career was spent at BNL, but he also had visiting stints at other academic institutions. He was at Oxford University as a Guggenheim Fellow in 1972–73. In the late 1980s, he was twice a visiting professor at the Université d’Aix-Marseille in the south of France, and he developed a special fondness for that region for the rest of his life. Upon retirement in 2008, he was given emeritus status—a title for which he had advocated, to allow the retired staff remain engaged in the lab’s scientific activities—capping a distinguished career that spanned 46 years.

Larry was in positions of leadership at BNL during the exciting years when the transfer line from the Tandem Van de Graaff was built, when the Booster Accelerator was under construction, and at the birth of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—built at BNL in the 1990s and completed in 2000. As such, he was a strong supporter of the successful and very productive rare kaon decay program at the BNL Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), as well as the introduction of nuclei to the BNL accelerator complex. Larry was one of the leading proponents of RHIC, and he contributed to elucidating its physics potential for investigating the dynamics of quarks and gluons liberated in high-energy collisions of heavy nuclei. His later work on spin-polarized proton interactions at RHIC was a continuation of his earlier research addressing physical processes studied at the AGS. Particularly important was Larry’s initiation of detector R&D for RHIC, as well as the call for the first experimental proposals for the RHIC program.

Over the past few decades, measurements at RHIC have led to a more profound understanding of the strong interactions that bind quarks and gluons, as well as the structure of protons and neutrons. Paramount among the major discoveries at RHIC has been the observation of the “perfect liquid": the quark–gluon plasma. Larry’s involvement in developing a scientific case for heavy-ion and polarized-proton physics at BNL helped pave the way for the later successes of the RHIC experimental program, a legacy of his theoretical work and vision that will endure.

Larry’s talents went beyond theoretical physics, extending in particular to music, which was a central part of his life. He played trumpet in high school and college, and he also loved to sing and play guitar. He became interested in instrument building, and constructed—with his wife Judy—a number of harpsichords, clavichords, and lutes. The harpsichord, in particular, became a mainstay of his family’s musical life. Later, the baritone horn became his main instrument, and he played with the community band for many years. Also, he could always be counted on as an enthusiastic bass in Messiah singalongs and for holiday carols.

Larry will be remembered for his devotion to his family, his important contributions and services to physics, his love of music, his gentle sense of humor, and for the generosity that he showed to many younger physicists whom he mentored over the years. He is survived by his wife, Judy, children, Daniel and Jennifer, and their families.