Christoph Hohenemser, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Clark University, died on November 11, 2011 in Eugene Oregon at the age of 74 due to complications associated with multiple sclerosis. He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Anne, two daughters, and four grandchildren.
Chris was an outstanding physicist, teacher, and moral being who had a remarkable dual career as an experimental physicist and and as a scientist working on issues related to the interface of science and society. At Clark he held professorships in the Department of Physics and in the interdisciplinary Environmental Science and Policy program, which he co-founded in 1972. He also was honored by an appointment as Distinguished Scientist in the George Perkins Marsh Institute, Clark's center for research on human interactions with technology and the environment.
His experimental research included pioneering studies of static and dynamic critical phenomena, defect structure and dynamics in metallic solids, and high Tc superconductivity. His research employed Mössbauer spectroscopy and perturbed gamma-gamma angular correlations, and depended on special temperature control techniques with stability in the milli-Kelvin range. With his students and post-docs, Hohenemser published eighty refereed articles and two refereed review papers in physics. His experimental work ended only when Hohenemser became physically disabled by multiple sclerosis in 1992. At the same time that Hohenemser was active in physics, he also worked on public policy issues, including issues related to nuclear weapons, nuclear electric power, and a wide range of technological hazards.
In 1976 he initiated with colleagues, Clark’s grid-connected co-generation plant, an idea that originated in student projects from Hohenemser’s undergraduate class on energy policy. He co-edited three books and authored 63 articles, chapters, and testimonies on science and public policy issues. While on sabbatical in Konstanz, Germany in 1986, he and his colleagues in Konstanz made the first determination of the composition of the fallout from the Chernobyl accident. He and colleagues established with local municipal authorities an emergency measurement program to assure food safety in the days after the heaviest fallout.
Chris was a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Society for Risk Analysis. Chris was born in 1937 to Kate and Kurt Hohenemser in Berlin, Germany, two years prior to the start of World War II. The latter event shaped much of the rest of his life. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1947 and settled in St. Louis, Missouri where his father took a position at McDonnell Aircraft Corporation designing helicopters. Chris was awarded a scholarship to Swarthmore College, where he studied physics and political science. As a leader of the Student Peace Union, he and several other students testified before Congress on the dangers of nuclear proliferation. After graduation, Swarthmore College awarded him a grant to study U.S. disarmament policy.
After receiving his Ph.D. in physics from Washington University, St. Louis in 1963, Chris did post-doctoral work and taught for seven years at Brandeis University before coming to Clark in 1971. In addition to his anti-war activism, he and several undergraduate students persuaded Brandeis to offer a free transitional year to talented and disadvantaged youth who might otherwise not have been able to attend college. The Transitional Year Program at Brandeis has been changing the lives of young people since 1968. While at Clark he held visiting appointments at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Konstanz, and the University of Groningen.
Chris had many interests beyond academia. He was a gifted photographer and poet and loved folk music. He attended weekly contra dances, played the banjo, fiddle, and harmonica, crafted wooden bowls on his lathe, remodeled the old farmhouse in which he lived, fixed cars and encouraged his two daughters to work with him. During two sabbatical years in The Netherlands, the family relied solely on bicycles for transportation in accordance with his desire to live simply and sustainably.
At the height of his career, Chris reluctantly retired from academic life in 2002 due to the debilitating effects of his multiple sclerosis and moved with his wife to Eugene, Oregon to escape the snowy winters of New England and to live near his younger daughter and her family. The disease slowly took away his ability to do most of the things he loved: working, hiking, playing music, dancing, writing, reading and eventually the ability to move at all. He fought hard to adjust to each new phase of loss and in 2005 wrote a memoir called The Path of My Life.
In the past few years, Chris found pleasure in singing, listening to music, being read to and spending time with family and friends. Chris Hohenemser was an uncommon man who did important research in physics and made the world a better place, while also maintaining a sense of humor and perspective. He worked intensely with and inspired many students and colleagues. The world needs more people like our friend and colleague, Chris Hohenemser.
