Harry Brumberger, professor emeritus of chemistry at Syracuse University and a pioneer in the field of small-angle x-ray scattering, died on 10 November 2000, in a Syracuse hospital, where he had been admitted for implantation of a pacemaker.
Harry was born on 28 August 1926 in Vienna, Austria. As a young teenager, he came to the US with his parents to flee anti-Semitic persecution. He held great affection for pre-1930s Austria, particularly Vienna, and talked often of the city’s vibrant cultural and intellectual life. However, he spoke very little of the experiences in Austria that prompted his family to leave the country.
Harry served in the US Army in the ski troops. He then attended the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in New York City, where he earned his degrees in chemistry: BS in 1949, MS in 1952, and PhD in 1955. He also studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. Harry’s doctorate was directed by Rudolph Marcus, who later won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Harry was the first student to complete a doctorate under Marcus’s direction, and his thesis involved kinetic studies on the reaction of diborane with amines; reaction rates were determined experimentally. In 1955, he began his postdoc with another Nobel prizewinner, Peter Debye, at Cornell University.
Harry joined the Syracuse University chemistry department in 1957 as an assistant professor; he became an associate professor in 1962 and a professor in 1969. He was also a visiting scholar at the University of Graz in Austria, National Bureau of Standards, Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, University of Cambridge in the UK, and ETH. In addition, he was a Fulbright grantee in India. Between 1969 and 1985 at Syracuse, he served as director of both the graduate biophysics program and the solid-state science and technology program.
Harry’s research on small-angle x-ray scattering began at Cornell and continued at Syracuse. In the early days (from about 1955 to 1975), the available x-ray sources were of very low intensity and the detectors were primitive. Precise alignment and angular measurements were required. Harry, who carried out meticulous experimental measurements and took great care in interpreting results, quickly became an internationally recognized expert in the field.
Between 1957 and 1965, Harry helped to develop both the theoretical structure and the experimental procedure for the application of small-angle x-ray scattering to a variety of systems. He showed how, from the relatively featureless scattering curves, one could obtain particle sizes and interphase surface areas. Subsequently (1964-81), he carried out such measurements on alloys, glasses, polymers, DNA, proteins, thin films, multiphase systems, and solutions near their critical points. Among the multiphase systems, supportedmetal heterogeneous catalysts were of particular interest. Then as now, knowing the interphase surface areas and how they change during catalyst preparation and use is extremely important.
A desire for conciseness and clarity informed Harry’s teaching. He took whatever time was needed to explain a difficult point to a student or colleague. Although his talents for deflating pomposity and signaling unclear thinking in others did not endear him to everyone, his teaching and advising were appreciated by his students. Furthermore, colleagues worldwide sought his advice on scientific and other matters. Correspondence from Harry was a great pleasure to read, both because of the elegance of the writing style and the intelligent content. An often-invited speaker at international conferences, he remained active as a member-at-large of the small-angle scattering special interest group of the American Crystallographic Association.
His last research project involved small-angle scattering measurements on metal-zeolite systems, performed at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source in 1999. The intensity of the source permits measurement of an entire scattering curve in seconds or minutes. This measurement allowed Harry to study the changes when a zeolite, impregnated with a platinum-ammonia compound, is exposed to reducing and oxidizing atmospheres in turn for several minutes at a time, as happens in catalyst preparation. In 1996, he established that sintering of metal particles (which should be avoided because it decreases surface area) occurred during calcination (oxidizing atmosphere), but could be minimized if the calcination was performed slowly at temperatures low enough for the ammonia to be lost without decomposition.
Harry retired from the chemistry department at Syracuse in 1995. However, he remained active in research, which he did on small-angle x-ray scattering from solid catalysts. In April 1996, Syracuse awarded him the title of research professor in chemistry. He continued to teach at the university and at SUNY’s environmental science and forestry college, located in Syracuse. One month before his death, he was involved in the planning for a colloid chemistry course, which he loved to teach, at Syracuse.
Harry was a gentleman and a scientist. A truly educated and learned man, he was widely read and often impressed others by his knowledge. He was particularly interested in history. In the months before his death, he studied Latin so that he could study some of the alchemical texts in the original language.
A few weeks before Harry’s death, a reporter for a Syracuse newspaper interviewed him for a story about the Cornell synchrotron. Harry told him about the joys of scientific research and how they justified all the hardships, such as all-nighters when beam time was available. He spoke of the “fascination about it” and ended with “I have pages and pages of … experiments we would like to do.”
Harry’s devotion to his research is one of the things we will long remember. We will miss his elegance, wit, and erudition, qualities that made him a great colleague and friend whose absence saddens us.
