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Monday, September 12, 2005

# Posted 10:26 AM by Patrick Belton  

JOHN BAHCALL: Princeton and, indeed, the United States has lost one of its greatest astrophysicists. He was also the father of a dear friend. Among Dr John Bahcall's public recognitions were the National Medal of Science in the United States, and the Dan David prize in Israel. Without his work on solar neutrinos, we would not know how the sun was powered by nuclear reactions; neither without him would we likely have the Hubble Space Telescope. His stature as a scientist is reflected by tribute pieces in the Times and Washington Post, and the over five hundred academic works he leaves to his field; still more is it reflected in his influence as a pedagogue, remaking postdoctoral training at the Institute for Advanced Study and training six of the twelve astrophysics professors at Princeton.

More than that, though, he had the lover's quarrel with the natural world which bemarks the best of physicists, and poets. In a newspaper interview in 2003, Bahcall described the universe as 'unattractive, implausible, crazy, but beautiful.' The light of G_d is the soul of man, says the Shiva ceremony. The light which burned in Bahcall, curious and amiable lover of nature, spread beyond him to an entire scientific community, and world.
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