Harold Ticho

Dr. Harold Klein Ticho
December 21, 1921 – November 3, 2020
Dr. Harold Klein Ticho, who was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, peacefully passed away on Election Day, November 3, 2020, in La Jolla, California, surrounded by his loving family. He was a little more than a month under 99 years of a well-lived life.
Harold was born on December 21, 1921, the eldest son of well-to-do parents Nathan and American-born Fannie Klein Ticho in Brno. Harold was later joined by younger brothers Leo, Charles, and Steven. From the age of 12 on, Harold experienced many momentous changes to his family and home life that testified to his family's resilience during a time of great personal and global upheaval. His younger brother Leo passed away in 1933 from a childhood illness.
Shortly after the Anschluss in 1938, when living near the Austrian border, Harold's mother sent him to a Swiss boarding school to get him safely out of the country. It would be one of the last times the family would be together until they reunited in the United States in 1940. The family was split apart during World War II, with Fannie trying unsuccessfully to return home from America, Nathan held at Dachau Concentration Camp, and young sons Charles and Steven living with relatives in what was, by then, known as the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
By the time they were reunited in 1940, Harold was enrolled at the University of Chicago, and Nathan, Fannie, Charles, and Steven began making a comfortable new life in New York. Brother Charles wrote about this period in his book From Generation to Generation. Written in honor of Harold's 90th birthday, his late wife Suzy Pansing Ticho noted in her book Fannie's Brothers that Nathan and Fannie were resilient, ""happy people who showed no bitterness from their experience and raised their sons to be productive, wonderful men."" Harold became a naturalized citizen of the US in 1944.
From 1939 onward, Harold moved quickly onto a path of professional excellence in the field of Physics that was cultivated while he was at the University of Chicago. He obtained his BS in Physics (1942), followed by his MS (1944) and his PhD (1949). Over the years, he had the unique opportunity to work with the greatest minds and innovators in his field such as Enrico Fermi in remarkable research institutes of experimental Physics such as Fermilab, Lawrence Berkeley Lab/the Bevatron and CERN/Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
At the age of 27, he became a lecturer and later professor of Physics at the University of California at Los Angeles, the beginning of his tenure with the UC System that would continue through becoming Dean of the Physics Department, Professor of Physics at UC San Diego and later Vice Chancellor of UC San Diego in 1983. In between, there were multiple Guggenheim Fellowships (1966-1967 and again in 1973-1974), numerous accolades and professional accomplishments, and a Visiting Professorship at Stanford University (1973-1974) and a sabbatical research position at CERN.
As a researcher, educator, and university administrator, Harold's contributions were extraordinary. Harold's leadership role in science education in the UC System throughout his career as professor and administrator propelled a period of great growth in all of the sciences, not only Physics. His transformative research in experimental elementary particle physics reshaped our knowledge about the foundations of matter that also paved the way to the quark model of the nucleon. His contribution was essential to the work of the Nobel Prize-winning team of Luis Alvarez at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Indeed, one of Harold's colleagues once confided to his late wife Suzy that Harold's research should have rightfully won the Nobel Prize in Physics because it was both seminal and transformative and he was respected and revered. He continued to leave his mark in science education well into his 80s with the UC San Diego public television science program he developed for budding young scientists.
Harold was not only resilient and remarkably accomplished, he was also a unique and rare person of matchless integrity, rationality, objectivity, fairness, generosity and strong moral character. He unusually excelled not only in the rarefied field of Physics, but also in the more pragmatic and politic field of university administration. As colleague and Distinguished Professor of Physics Lu Sham recalled, Harold's role during a period of state funding cuts ""…was instrumental in laying the foundation for the general campus recovery and …the transformation of the campus from a small university to a large one."" He tempered all with a gentle, mischievous, and sometimes naughty sense of humor, and a great love of his family, classical music, opera, and theater. His family and everyone who worked with him were devoted and admired him greatly. Harold appealed to the better angels of everyone's nature and was the family's moral compass.
Everyone has a favorite Harold story, anecdote, joke or limerick, though many would say that anytime spent with him was among their favorite times of their lives. His brilliance and methodical nature were contrasted with his quick, spontaneous wit, and other surprising traits like his foot to the floor driving in his Alfa Romeo, and his almost reckless and frenzied cooking, pan clanging and tomato sauce flinging when he made his signature dish of veal parmigiana – which he said and made with great flourish.
In his 90s, he became a San Diego Padres fan and lectured on the application of Physics to baseball. Well into his late 90s, he would still use his Physics knowledge-and some inexpensive binder clips and post-its gently placed on the clock's pendulum - to set his early 19th Century Morbier grandfather clock to match the accuracy of the Atomic Clock. Or he would compose silly limericks on the spot during a meal, with family members begging him to repeat them slowly so they could write them down.
Before his beloved wife Suzy Pansing Ticho passed away from terminal lung cancer in 2016, Harold enjoyed a rich, cultured, and well-traveled life with her. They even ventured to the South Pole during their trip to Antarctica. They frequently and generously entertained in their La Jolla home with family, and guests such as Jonas Salk, John Cage and John Kenneth Galbraith, as well as the Seuss Library librarian who played wildly funny songs and classical pieces on toy pianos. Both Harold and Suzy loved having lots of family around them to share their love of life.
On the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2011, Harold's brother Charles aptly advised him to, ""Remain the sun around which all of us revolve, the sun that has illuminated our path to higher goals and greater achievements and the sun that generates so much of our love, esteem, and admiration."" When Charles and brother Steven were forced from their hometown by the Nazis in 1939, they were inspired by Harold's early teachings to bring their favorite books for their entire allotment of 20 kilos of possessions they were allowed to take with them.
Harold is survived by his brother Charles, stepson Mike Wallace and his grandchildren, and the Ticho, Pansing, Wallace, Kravich, and Klein families comprised of beloved in-laws, nephews, nieces, and cousins who all admired and loved him. He passed away peacefully with family members beside him – an especially tender passing during the time of COVID. A remarkable gem of a man and a remarkable life well-lived. In keeping with Harold's wishes, the family asks that anyone who wants to honor his memory make a contribution to the Global Union of Scientists for Peace and The Humane Society.