Virginia R. Brown died on February 8, 2016, after a long battle with cancer. She was a wonderful colleague, friend, and distinguished theoretical nuclear physicist. During her long career Virginia made important contributions, including the nucleon-nucleon interaction, nuclear reaction theory, and nuclear structure. Virginia loved physics and had a deep commitment to getting to the heart of things. She worked very productively with theoretical and experimental colleagues. Her enthusiasm and laughter were contagious.
Virginia was born March 11, 1934, received her Ph.D. from McGill University in 1964, was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University from 1963 to 1964, then worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory until 1995. She was an NSF Program Officer for Nuclear Theory from 1995 to 1998. Following this she was a visiting Professor in the Physics Department of the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Research Scientist in the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at MIT.
Virginia's early calculations were for nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung. They included the effects of parity non-conservation and meson exchange contributions. She continued refining and extending these calculations throughout her career, comparing them with experiment. Her work with experimentalists started soon after joining Livermore, working with J. Anderson on charge exchange reactions in nuclei. Her long collaboration with theorist Vic Madsen started then. They developed the reaction theory and the nuclear structure aspects to understand charge exchange reactions, including a model for the mixing of giant resonance states with the low-lying states that were observed in the experiments. Their unique contribution was the systematic inclusion of isospin degrees of freedom that was required to understand the data. This was successfully applied to inelastic scattering processes without any additional modifications. In the past decade Virginia continued her collaboration with experimentalists, working with June Matthews’ group at MIT.
Aron Bernstein remembers how stimulating it was to work with Virginia. In the mid 1970s he received a letter from her saying that she and Vic Madsen had calculated the isospin dependence of effective charges, based on mixing with giant resonance states, and that this could explain the puzzles and regularities that he had observed in inelastic alpha particle scattering. Their collaboration started in their first meeting and went on for many years, yielding a productive series of papers. These included electromagnetic tests of the accuracy of the observed neutron and proton transition matrix elements and their observation using different hadronic probes, in addition to electromagnetic methods such as electron scattering and Coulomb excitation. He remembers with great pleasure his annual spring break trip to Berkeley and Livermore to work with Virginia, including great dinners in Berkeley and San Francisco.
Virginia was an active member of the American Physical Society. She was Secretary/Treasurer of the Division of Nuclear Physics from 1986 to 1995. Virginia’s contributions were recognized by her colleagues in nuclear physics when she was chosen to receive the first Division of Nuclear Physics Distinguished Service Award in 2003, with a citation which included: "For substantial and extensive contributions to the nuclear physics community….., and for her role in bringing to fruition the historic first joint meeting of the nuclear physicists of the American and Japanese Physical Societies as the Chair of HAWAII 2001.
Ben Gibson saw first-hand Virginia's remarkable contributions to the APS. He first met Virginia as a postdoctoral fellow at LLNL in 1968. She introduced him to nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung. Their closest connection came through the APS Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP), when he succeeded her as Secretary-Treasurer in 1995, and she mentored him in that time-consuming position. Virginia's efforts strengthened the NSAC Long Range Plan Town Meetings, the Conference Experience for Undergraduates, the nuclear physics Dissertation award, and many other initiatives. While at the NSF, Virginia first suggested exploring a meeting with the nuclear physicists of the Physical Society of Japan. She chaired the first of this series of successful international physics meetings (2001) and continued to play an important role through the 2014 joint meeting. After Virginia left the NSF she enjoyed a number of research visits in Los Alamos and meals with him and Susan Seestrom. During one visit a history of the DNP (see the DNP website) was drafted. Virginia’s imprint of the Division of Nuclear Physics is indelible, and the Division owes her a great debt of gratitude.
Virginia will be sorely missed as a dear friend and an important member of the physics community.
