Daily News | Thomas J. Devlin, pioneering particle physicist and popular Rutgers professor emeritus, has died at 87
Thomas J. Devlin, 87, of Philadelphia, pioneering particle physicist, popular professor emeritus at Rutgers University, and award-winning mentor, died Sunday, Oct. 2, of kidney disease and congestive heart failure at the Quadrangle retirement community in Haverford.
He conceived, directed, and participated in numerous projects that involved hundreds of institutions and physicists all while teaching undergraduate and graduate classes in physics, astronomy, engineering, premed, and biology. Convinced that collaboration between students and instructors was vital to both education and discovery, hein the New York Times in 1995 that “the best way to learn science is to spend time with scientists doing science.
He taught at Princeton for five years before Rutgers, was a fellow at the American Physical Society, and became a visiting faculty member in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania after his retirement. He wrote papers, earned grants, and, after shifting into astrophysics in the early 2000s, worked at the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia observing other galaxies.
“I was a sponge,” he said in a short summary of his life, “soaking up everything I could read about math and science.”