Lasting Memories

Walter E. Meyerhof
April 22, 1922-May 27, 2006
Los Altos, California

Walter E. Meyerhof, a Stanford University physics professor emeritus, died May 27, 2006, in a Los Altos nursing home from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 84.

He was born in Kiel, Germany, on April 22, 1922. His parents were Jewish, but he and two other children were raised Lutheran to protect them from anti-Semitism. His father, Otto Meyerhof, won a Nobel Prize in medicine. His mother, Hedwig Schallenberg, was a painter.

He lived in England from 1936 to 1939 and in France from 1939 to 1941. He and 200 other intellectuals escaped Vichy France aided by Varian Fry, an American journalist who ran a rescue network.

After arriving in the United States, he attended the University of Pennsylvania and received a doctorate degree in physics in 1946. He also married Miriam Ruben in 1946.

He then taught at the University of Illinois until he was recruited in 1949 to teach at Stanford University by professors Felix Bloch, who would win the Nobel Prize in physics in 1952, and Leonard Schiff.

Meyerhof came to Stanford in 1949 from the University of Illinois, where he had been teaching for three years. He established the nuclear-physics program at Stanford in the 1960s.

When students came to him in the early 1970s wanting an astronomical observatory, he suggested they build one -- and they did.

He chaired the Physics Department from 1970 to 1977.

"I remember that he was always the departmental ombudsman and always a strong supporter of affirmative action and encouraging women to study physics," said Physics Professor Blas Cabrera, a former advisee of Meyerhof as a graduate student.

Meyerhof won a Dinkelspiel Award from Stanford, given for outstanding service to undergraduate students.

Meyerhof wrote two textbooks, "Elements of Nuclear Physics" and, with Jorg Eichler, "Relativistic Atomic Collisions."

Survivors include his wife of 59 years, Miriam Meyerhof of Menlo Park; his sister, Bettina Emerson of Seattle; his sons, Michael Meyerhof of Menlo Park and David Meyerhof of Burbank, and a grandson, Matthew Meyerhof of Santa Barbara.