I had no idea Bruce was ill, and am deeply saddened to hear this news. I met Bruce many times when visiting Chicago, and had a great time with him during a conference in China a few years back. He was always open, generous and kind. And of course, a formidable physicist. I most certainly will miss him.

What a terrible loss. I have no idea he had been sick. He was making the switch to cosmology as I was a beginning grad student, and he sat in on a few of the cosmology classes I was taking at that time. I always appreciate having him asking all the insightful questions in class. I remember his knowing winks to me several times when Wayne Hu was talking about CMB polarization and Chandrasekhar’s decomposition…

Man, what a sad day.

My condolences to all. Spent my first summer in grad school working for him on a CMB polarization experiment. Even though I ended up going in a different research direction for my thesis, it was a great experience. He had bucketloads of enthusiasm for his research and always wanted to get his hands dirty in every part of the project.

I’ll always remember the time I gave a seminar at Chicago and Bruce offered to drive me to the airport. Little did I realize what Bruce’s concept of driving entailed. He’ll be missed. My condolences to all of his friends and family.

How very sad. I only learned the other day from a visitor that Bruce was ill. He was a wonderful host to me several years back during a short sabbatical at Chicago, and was always ready to lend his support. My sympathy to friends at Chicago, who will most keenly feel the absence of their wonderful colleague.

While not unexpected, this is very tragic news. He was indeed way too young. We will all feel his loss deeply.

Hi Joanne,
Do you know why the streaming videos of the SSI lectures no longer work? This was a great pedagogical resource, but unfortunately we can no longer access it
shantanu

I’m so sorry to hear that we’ve lost Bruce. My office was next to his for several years, and we had some great — and at times wonderfully irreverent — conversations on just about everything.

I’m very sad to hear about Bruce’s death. Back during my undergraduate days at Caltech, in the late 1960s, when he was a grad student, Bruce was the driving force behind the Caltech Student Film Society, otherwise known as CinemaTech. As a member of the committee, I learned a tremendous amount about foreign and experimental films from being involved in the once- or twice-monthly showings. Although the cost of tickets was modest, the series was so successful (in good part because of Bruce’s knowledge and energy) that we had to add free showings with refreshments to avoid becoming profitmaking.

I can still visualize scenes from many of the films we showed–”Rashomon,” Yojimbo,” “The Fireman’s Ball,” and some very strange experimental films by Kenneth Anger (“Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome”).

I only saw him once after I graduated, about 15 years later when he gave a talk to the Carnegie-Mellon physics department (I was handling science and engineering public relations for CMU at that time), and I made a point of saying hello. I’m glad I did.

Not only was Bruce a tremendous physicist, but one of the most interesting and multifaceted people I’ve ever met. One of my favourite memories of Chicago is of listening to “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” at his house and hearing completely new dimensions to the music on his amazing (and tinkered with) sound-system. I’ll also remember him cycling around and around the LASR corridors on his little folding commuter bike, like a little boy. He was a playful spirit. When I last saw him I thought he was getting better from his illness. This is really sad news and my deepest condolences to his family and friends.

I was thinking about Bruce since I heard the news, and then read Hiranya’s comment about his little folding bicycle and it just reminded me again of how much fun he was to see every day. Charles mentioned how Bruce always used to ask “naieve” questions at talks, and how it gave the rest of us a push to understand things better and not to feel guilty when, after trying as hard as possible, a slide went over your head.

I’m sorry to hear that. Unlike everyone else here, I had a very bad experience with him. I worked with him when I was an undergrad, and he never managed to demonstrate any understanding of the topic I was supposed to be working on, or any mentoring ability. (The only support I got was from a Princeton grad student – thanks, Denis! Oh, and then Bruce made me the CfCP webmaster. Which meant I had to ask the sysadmins to do things like, say, install PHP, on the authority that I was… a second-year undergrad? That didn’t go over well.) I happily left that research position to work the door at a bar (yes, really), until I found a great research position with Don York.

But I never wished Bruce ill, and now regret that I never got to know his clearly excellent side.

How very sad. Bruce was a wonderful colleague even outside of Physics. When I was a professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago, Bruce joyously “conspired” with my wife Carol to arrange a family 40th birthday party at FermiLabs. The evening coincided with a lecture on evolution and baseball statistics by Stephen Jay Gould (which reflected his discussions with Ed Purcell). Bruce’s passion for science enlivened a tour of the KevT experiment (including the salt crystals from mines beneath Lake Erie) for non-physicists.

I was a grad student on KTeV. Bruce was already transitioning to cosmology when I arrived at Chicago, so I didn’t get to work with him very much, but when we talked about KTeV it was amazing how well he remembered all the details and would get to the heart of the problem so quickly. Talking to him was always good for a morale boost too, because he would get so excited and that enthusiasm was contagious. He often stopped by the student office to chat about sports, music, or running. The last time I saw him was about a month ago at his retirement celebration; while he was obviously ill, he was warm, gracious, engaged, and enthusiastic just as he always had been. He was the driving force behind the research that I have so loved and he was an example of life well-lived. He was a larger-than-life figure in my life and it is hard to comprehend that he is gone. My thoughts are with his friends and family.

I remember Bruce as a boy when we went to grade school in West L. A. He grew up in a small, older home, near Brentwood Elementary School. He live a few blocks away from me, and I would visit with him to trade coins and talk baseball. He also enjoyed bowling and became rather good at it.

In High School, Bruce was entered into an advanced level of study, along with some of my smarter friends. Bruce had a sense of humor and never minded when his friends would tease him for studying too much. He was capable of doing the same to you. I remember that he sought out Stan Laurel and was granted an interview. His pals were quite impressed. I saw him once or twice when he wast at UCLA and knew he was interested in becoming a physicist. I am glad that he was successful at it. I wondered if he was going to go to our 50th High School reunion this summer. He was the one of the people that I, and another friend, Glenn Lyons, wanted to see.