R. Igor Gamow

Igor was born to Russian immigrant parents in Washington D.C., before they were naturalized. Both were physicists. His mother, Rho, did not work in her field until later in life when she worked in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Edward Teller. His father, Geo, is of course the renowned George Gamow of the alpha decay, the Big Bang Theory, the triplet code, the name on the tower at C.U. Boulder and so much more. Igor's childhood was spiced with travels within the United States, Canada and Central and South America. He was introduced to the Western Lore in Los Alamos- a love he carried throughout his life - his last horse is still in his home barn. There and back home in Bethesda MD, the Gamow home was frequented by scientists and good students; a happening that seemed quite natural to Igor. Russian was spoken at home and so in order to integrate Igor more into the American way of life, he was enrolled at Staunton Military Academy. He never forgot to shine his shoes or make a bed and his English improved. But then a daughter of family friends introduced Igor to classical ballet. He dropped out of High School, took the hard work seriously, supported himself as a motorcycle courier for CBS news and eventually danced for the National Ballet Company in Washington D.C! Ballet, motorcycles, and animals, horses and particularly dogs, were his three loves. He never let go! Several years passed and the question of "what does the future hold?" came up. Will it be the life of a dancer or something else? Academia won out. George Gamow had accepted a Professorship at C.U. Boulder- and Igor followed. That meant a cross country trip in his MG TC. As is true for so many, he was hooked on Boulder the first time he laid eyes on it. It felt right for him. There was a lot of catching up to do academically, and he did. In the Fall of 1960 Igor scheduled a full load of academic courses such as "Invertebrate Zoology" and "Scientific Terminology". In these classes he met an exchange student from Germany, Elfriede Reger, who along with these classes also took "Remedial English". Well, resistance to evolving feelings on both sides was strong, but during the Spring Semester Igor fell totally in love and it just so happened that by Summer's end he married this refugee, originally from East Germany, and as she often said came to this country and married a Russian. The young couple lived in lower Four Mile Canyon with their two German Shepherds, paid attention to their academic progress and eventually both enrolled and completed Ph.D. programs. For Igor a short postdoctoral program at Cal Tech followed. Igor did research under the tutelage of Professor Max Delbrueck, a student colleague of his Father's in Germany. While there he was hired by the Department of Aerospace at CU, as a biologist, and for a short time, during the Spring of 1968, Father & Son were both Professors at CU. A decade later Igor switched to Chemical Engineering, again the odd man out, but bioengineering was starting to bloom and he embraced it. Igor was always the teacher, he listened to his students, he furthered their progress and learned from them in return. He actually responded this way to anybody, friends and foes, faculty and students alike. He was curious and incessantly looked for answers to his many questions. His curiosity led him into the world of inventions: "energy return running shoes", led to a wonderous collaboration with now Professor at MIT, Hugh Herr. There were trials for a better forearm crutch, and then his interest expanded into exercise physiology. "Sleep high" and "train low" in terms of altitude led to the development of the "High Altitude Bed", a firm structure in which one can lower the atmospheric pressure and sleep in it. Being inspired by a student and friend, Gary Ruggera, led to the development of the "Gamow Bag", the portable hyperbaric chamber for high altitude climbing and hiking, an invention that has saved many lives. Where would you test such an invention? In Nepal, of course. And so opened an important chapter of his life. He fell in love with Nepal and its people and under the guidance of Narayan Shrestha he visited more than a dozen times. Yes, he and Narayan developed a program for students to study high altitude physiology in place, so he visited and taught at the same time. For the students it was an unforgettable experience, they were submerged in a very different culture and had a Professor available around the clock. More years passed and now in retirement, Igor became a prolific writer and film maker. In particular an intimate working relationship with Peter Garrity resulted in the interpretive film "The Galloping Gamows", two novels and smaller works. One he liked in particular is called "Rho, a legendary love affair" written by Jeffrey Warren Garrity, Peter's son. Now, last but not least, he revived his father's imaginary character, Mr. c.G.h. Tompkins, the bank clerk who attends scientific lectures, falls asleep and interacts with the scientists who were talked about. He and Scorpio Steele, writer, illustrator and friend have created eleven episodes in comic book art, the latest one was published in 2020 during Covid. I thank all who have interacted with Igor and thus influenced his life and I know he influenced many. I will finish this short biography with a long philosophical statement by Kazantzakis, whom Igor liked very much: "A man, writes Kazantzakis, has three duties. His first duty is to the mind which imposes order on disorder, formulates laws, builds bridges over the unfathomable abyss, and sets up rational boundaries beyond which man does not dare to go. But his second duty is to the heart, which admits of no boundaries, which yearns to pierce beyond phenomena and to merge with something beyond mind and matter. His third duty is to free himself from both mind and heart, from the great temptation of the hope which both offer of subduing phenomena or of finding the essence of things. A man must then embrace the annihilating days without any hope, he must say that nothing exists, neither life nor death, and must accept this necessity bravely, with exultation and song. He may then build the affirmative structure of his life over this abyss in an ecstasy of tragic joy." Or as Igor concisely concluded "I decided a long time ago to accept everything and believe nothing."