1913–2005

Elected in 1967

“For microwave tube research and development.”

BY JAMES F. GIBBONS AND CALVIN F. QUATE

MARVIN CHODOROW, Emeritus Professor of applied physics and electrical engineering, who had been at Stanford since 1947, died peacefully at his home on campus on October 17, 2005, of natural causes. He was 92 years old.

Chodorow was born in Buffalo, New York, on July 16, 1913. He received his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Buffalo in 1934. In 1936, while in graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he met a social worker, Leah Ruth Turitz, whom he married in 1937. He obtained his doctorate in physics from MIT in 1939. His thesis introduced what is now known as the “Chodorow potential,” which is recognized as a seminal solution of Schroedinger’s equation for electrons in metals.

Chodorow’s early career was spent as a research associate at Pennsylvania State College (1940–1941), physics instructor at the College of the City of New York (1941–1943), and senior project engineer at Sperry Gyroscope Company (1943–1947), where he worked with Sigurd and Russell Varian, Ed Ginzton, Bill Hansen, Myrl Stearns, Don Snow, and Fred Salisbury. In 1948, this small group of engineers and physicists founded Varian Associates in Palo Alto, California.