Harold Norman Spector (1930 - 2024)

Education

1951
B.S., Physics, Massachussetts Institute of Technology
1957
Ph.D., Physics, University of Chicago - On the scattering and absorption of high energy radiation by a hydrogen atom

Positions

1959 - 1964
Assistant Professor of Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology
1964 - 1970
Associate Professor of Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology
1970 - 2000
Professor of Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology
2000 - 2007
Distinguished Professor of Physics, Illinois Institute of Technology

Biography

Thomas Erber was born in December 1930 in New York City. His parents had emigrated from Austria a few years earlier. He graduated from Peter Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan in 1947. Erber obtained a BS in physics from MIT in 1951 and a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1957.

Erber was a full-time faculty member in the physics department at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago from 1959 to 2007. He obtained a joint appointment as professor of mathematics in 1986, also becoming a distinguished professor at IIT in 2000 and retired in 2007.

As a reflection of the breadth of Erber's interests in physics, Doing Physics, a Festschrift in honor of his 80th birthday, was published in 2010. It contained articles by former students, colleagues at IIT, collaborators, and friends that dealt with a disparate variety of topics.

Erber was a fellow of the American Physical Society as well as a member of the American Mathematical Society, IEEE, Magnetics Society, Sigma Xi, European Physical Society, Austrian Physical Society, the Institute of Physics (UK), and Victor Franz Hess Gesellschaft. He died in March 2024 in Naples, Florida.

Thomas Erber published 100 papers during his lifetime, including one on synchrotron radiation in 2023. A broad range of filesd have been significantly influenced by his work:

Notable Publications