NEWS RELEASE, 11/30/98 UC Berkeley physicist David L. Judd, an expert in fusion reactor theory, has died at the age of 75

By Robert Sanders, Public Affairs

BERKELEY -- David Lockhart Judd, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, long involved in the effort to develop commercial fusion power, died from a heart attack on Monday, Nov. 23, at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley. He was 75. A senior lecturer in the physics department at UC Berkeley, Judd was former head of the Physics Division and a former associate director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Until his untimely passing, he was actively engaged in research to develop fusion power for electrical generation, and in teaching and guiding undergraduate and graduate students in physics at UC Berkeley. In 1976 he was co-chairman of the first U.S. workshop on producing commercial electric power by way of heavy ion fusion - that is, inertial fusion ignited by heavy ion beams. Since then he has worked continuously in the heavy-ion fusion accelerator research group (HIFAR) in the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division at Berkeley Lab. Though he worked primarily on problems of particle accelerators and ion and electron optics, he also conducted research in the theoretical areas of plasma, neutron and nuclear physics, and on nonlinear mechanics. During his long and distinguished career Judd received many awards and honors. He was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society, was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, and was the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Whitman College. Born in Chehalis, Wash., on January 8, 1923, he graduated summa cum laude from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., in 1943. He served as a lieutenant in the United States Navy from 1944-1946 at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he worked on the Manhattan Project. After the war he attended the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1950 with a PhD in theoretical physics and mathematics. In 1951, Judd was invited by Ernest O. Lawrence to join his laboratory in Berkeley. In 1953 he also became a member of the Department of Physics at UC Berkeley. At the Lawrence National Laboratory he served as head of the Physics Division for seven years, was associate director of the lab for three years, and has been a senior research physicist since 1970. He is survived by his wife Martha Leah Brown Judd, whom he met at Los Alamos during World War II; his two sons Bruce and Ralph; and grandsons Ian and Jesse. A celebration of his life will be held on Monday, Nov. 30, at 7:30 p.m. at the Faculty Club on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The family requests that people not send flowers. Memorial contributions may be made to the David L. Judd Memorial Fund in Physics, ATTN: D. Estropia, UC Berkeley Foundation, 2440 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94720-4200, or to the charity of the donor's choice.