Former Physics prof revered for scientific, family values

Henry Fairbank, former professor and chairman of the physics department, passed away Thursday after a brief illness. He was 92.

Fairbank served as chairman of the department from 1962 to 1973. He was highly regarded by his colleagues and students not only as a physicist, but also as a citizen and family man, said Adjunct Professor of Physics Dewey Lawson, who worked under Fairbank as a graduate student.

After completing his Ph.D. in physics at Yale University, Fairbank joined the Manhattan Project during World War II, which developed the world’s first atomic bomb. Following the war, Fairbank returned to Yale to join the department of physics. In 1954, he received a master’s degree following studies as a Guggenheim Fellow at Oxford Universitiy, working in low temperature physics and focusing his research on liquid helium.

“He was very highly regarded among low temperature physicists around the world,” Lawson said.

In 1962, Fairbank was recruited from Yale to be the chairman of the physics department at Duke. In 1996, one of his graduate students, David Lee, along with two other collaborators, won a Nobel prize for work on superfluid helium-3. Lee credited Fairbank for suggesting the cooling method that led to their successful work.

Fairbank was a devoted Duke basketball fan and attended home games of the men’s and women’s teams with his wife, Martha. The two were also active runners and competed in several masters tournaments across the country and abroad between 1975 and 1989. Henry ran the Boston Marathon when he was 59.

Fairbank’s ashes will be interred in the columbarium at the Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Durham, where he and his wife were members for 48 years. A memorial service will be held there on March 12.