Gerald Paul Calame, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the United States Naval Academy, died of consequences of congestive heart failure in Annapolis, Maryland on October 6, 2014. Gerry was born on November 27, 1930 in Le Locle, Switzerland. He emigrated to the United States with his family in 1936, settling in the Queens borough of New York City. He became a naturalized United States citizen while he was a teenager. Gerry attended the College of Wooster in Ohio, receiving the B.A. degree in physics in 1953. He began graduate studies at Harvard University in the area of experimental nuclear physics, on a topic involving methods of raising the energy and beam quality in the Harvard cyclotron. Gerry subsequently changed his research area to theoretical nuclear reactor physics, and completed his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1960 under the guidance of Harvey Brooks, on a topic involving the multi-group modeling of thermal neutron transport.
Gerry was employed as a scientist at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna, New York from 1959-61, in the Advanced Development Activities Group. He performed neutron transport and fuel burnup calculations for nuclear reactor core designs. His computer codes were utilized in the design of the cores on the S5G and D2G reactors, for modeling the space and energy distribution of thermal neutrons. The reactors and their descendants were deployed on a number of U.S. Navy submarines and cruisers. Gerry also wrote portions of several chapters in the Naval Reactors Physics Handbook and published a number of journal articles, including his best-known work on a variational procedure for determining spatially dependent thermal neutron spectra. Gerry subsequently joined the faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 1961 as an Assistant Professor in the Nuclear Engineering Department. He taught graduate courses on nuclear physics, reactor fundamentals, and neutron transport theory, and he advised a number of graduate students. He continued research on neutron diffusion and scattering, and he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1963.
In 1966, Gerry joined the Science Department of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland as an Associate Professor, which afforded him the opportunity to focus on undergraduate teaching and to reestablish involvement with the U.S. Navy. In fact, teaching at the Naval Academy was to become his life’s work. The 1960s was a period of great academic change at the Naval Academy. Previously, the curriculum was a rigorous but inflexible sequence of core courses, but this began to change in the early 1960s with the introduction of some electives, and in 1964 the Midshipmen were allowed to minor in a subject, with physics being one of the available options. The physics professors in the 1960’s, including Gerry, were charged with building up the curriculum towards a planned full physics major, which was ultimately implemented in the 1969-70 academic year, with the Physics Department becoming formally established in 1970. Gerry was promoted to Full Professor in 1969.
During his 34 year career at the Naval Academy, Gerry taught nearly every course offered in the Physics Department. His early specialization on nuclear physics quickly broadened to teaching quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, thermal physics, mechanics, and engineering physics. He was noted for using humorous theatrics in his lectures, to capture the attention of the Midshipmen and add some fun to difficult subject material. Probably the greatest pleasure in his career was during the 1970s, when he taught astronomy. This was a time of great discovery for the field, ranging from the lunar landings, to the Pioneer outer planet flybys and the Viking landings on Mars, to new measurements of cosmological parameters. Gerry was able to combine detailed physics with his theatrical lecturing style and extensive 35 mm slide sets of astronomical objects, planetary images, and artist’s impressions to enthrall the Midshipmen to the wonder and underlying physical order in the universe. For several semesters, Gerry also ran a seminar course on “the science in science fiction” as a further way to stimulate interest, using literature as a starting point for detailed mathematical explorations of the underlying physics. During his career, he advised five Trident Scholar projects, which are year-long advanced research projects for first-class (senior) Midshipmen with a written thesis at a technical level comparable to Master’s thesis research at graduate schools. The various Trident Scholar projects included topics in neutron transport theory, nuclear physics, cosmic rays, and celestial mechanics. Gerry served as Chair of the Physics Department from 1979-1982. A notable accomplishment during his tenure as Chair was the successful enhancement of the diversity of the faculty in the department. Following his service as Chair, he concentrated on re-organizing and teaching the thermal physics, engineering physics, and core physics courses, and for several years, he served as the Senior Academic Advisor for the Physics Department. He also performed computational research on stimulated Raman scattering in laser beams in collaboration with scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. Gerry retired from the Naval Academy in 2000, and he was named Professor Emeritus of Physics in 2005.
Gerry was a loving husband and father who had a wide array of interests outside of work. He enjoyed hiking, squash, long distance running, and reading tales of science fiction, the supernatural, and the sword and sorcery style of phantasy. He was a particular fan of H.P. Lovecraft. He was also a military history buff, with an emphasis on World War II. He enjoyed watching movies of all genres and a wide variety of spectator sports. Gerry was an avid collector of teddy bears, which really symbolized his sweet and gentle nature. He will be greatly missed by his family, his colleagues, and the thousands of current and former Naval Officers that he influenced during his long career.
