“Maybe today is not a good day to introduce you to Professor Fink!” These were the words of John Archibald Wheeler to one of the authors of this obituary (WPS) on his first day of work at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) over 40 years ago. How did we get here?
Wheeler had just spoken very warmly about another physicist at UT Austin, Manfred Fink, and had recommended contacting him. However, at that very moment, a voice was heard booming down the corridor: “All these damn theorists should be shot to the Moon!” Despite this less than auspicious beginning, this relationship turned into a lifelong friendship.
Manfred Kurt Fink was born in Karlshorst, a suburb of Berlin, in Germany, on 16 August 1937. On the website of the physics department of UT Austin, he summarized his remarkable journey “From Fatherless Child to Tenured Physics Professor.” Indeed, Manfred lost his father to a military training accident in Ukraine when he was 6 years old. Shortly after the war, the remaining family fled the Russian occupation of Berlin by walking across Germany to his mother’s hometown of Speyer on the Rhine, where he went to school. He was even able to meet Albert Schweitzer as a young adult.
When Manfred was 8 years old, he was asked by a neighbor which profession he would like to pursue, to which he promptly answered, “I want to become an inventor.” Consequently, he went on to study physics at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe and completed his PhD with Joachim Kessler in 1966. His thesis on measuring binding energies of molecules by electron scattering attracted the attention of experts in the US, including Russell Bonham, and he was invited to work at Indiana University in Bloomington as a postdoctoral fellow.
In 1967, he received an offer from UT Austin and was rapidly promoted to the position of full professor in 1980. Here, he was instrumental in building the atomic physics group, hiring promising scientists and giving them a chance to blossom in a family-like setting, while at the same time providing them with memorable advice. He was very generous with advice. Within his own research team he took his turns at overnight data runs like the students, and he had an amazing ability to clear the air after inevitable student shortcomings, noting it but then moving right on to forgive and forget. He retired in 2016 after 50 years of highly dedicated service to the physics department and the university.
The breadth and depth of Manfred’s scientific work is impressive. He made seminal contributions to electron scattering and molecular physics. His unique knowledge and deep understanding of this field stands out most clearly in his more than 200-page contribution to the new edition of Constituents of Matter, the classic textbook by Ludwig Bergmann and Clemens Schäfer. He also worked on simulating the bombardment of the space shuttle by upper atmospheric molecules as well as measuring the mass of the neutrino, and he held several patents on applications of Raman spectroscopy.
Never afraid of attacking problems outside of his area of expertise, Manfred also became interested in forensic science and established a highly popular course on this topic for nonphysics majors.
Manfred enjoyed an enormous international reputation for his integrity, his scientific work, and his dedication to science. It is therefore not surprising that the American Physical Society made him a Fellow “… for the extension of high energy electron scattering to high temperature compounds, biological molecules, the determination of molecular charge densities and state-selected molecules.” A consummate experimentalist, in response to Wheeler’s aphorism “one picture is worth a thousand equations,” Manfred added, “an experiment is even better.”
Research was only one aspect of Manfred’s scientific life. As a naturally gifted instructor, his heart was also in teaching and interactions with students at any convenient blackboard. He introduced the “Mutual Grilling” Seminar series, during which students could pose difficult questions to each other. He also initiated an ongoing atomic physics seminar within the department. It was very popular in spite of the late Friday afternoon time slot, partially due to the free donuts and coffee he personally provided at the beginning of each seminar.
Manfred always maintained close ties to Germany. He worked with many scientists in Germany and received a Humboldt Research Award, which he spent with the late Herbert Walther at the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Munich. For this reason, it was important to him that American physics students be exposed to the way science is done internationally. With his encouragement, his students had unusual success in receiving Fulbright and DAAD fellowships to spend time studying abroad. He was also a key figure in a long-term student exchange program between UT Austin and the University of Würzburg.
A tokamak to Ukraine in exchange for an atomic bomb to be delivered to the physics department was only one of many unusual ideas Manfred proposed to contribute to disarmament. But this episode brings out in a striking way his deep honesty and kindness. He sometimes made unfiltered remarks and was known to tell it like it is, such as: “If one were to take away half of the money from the German physics professors, they would be twice as effective.” Although statements of this kind were impolitic, they contained a grain of truth.
Manfred and his wife, Ingrid, were enormously hospitable and always invited students and colleagues to their house for dinner and parties. All of us felt like family members, at UT Austin and wherever our careers led afterward.
On 16 November 2023, a dedicated scientist, inspiring teacher, and fine human being, a Mensch (מענטש), passed away. We will all miss him and will always hear his voice echoing down the corridor.
Obituaries are made available as a service to the physical sciences community and are not commissioned by Physics Today. Submissions are lightly edited for grammar and style. Click here for guidelines on submitting an obituary. If you are a copyright holder who thinks that an obituary violates your copyright, please contact us.
