Daniel Sperber

GENEVA - Daniel Sperber was born on May 8, 1930, in Vienna, Austria, and passed away on Aug. 15, 2009, in Geneva.
He immigrated to Israel as a child just before World War II. He participated in Israel's War of Independence in the battles over Jerusalem. After his military discharge, he enlisted at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, obtaining an MCE master's degree in physics. In 1955, he commenced his graduate studies in Princeton University in New Jersey. He received his doctorate from Princeton in 1961. After graduating, he shared his time between the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and the IIT Research Institute (IITRI) in Chicago. In 1967, he accepted a position as an associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he served until he retired in May 2005. While at RPI, Dan developed many collaborations with overseas colleagues. As a result, he spent a year as a Nordica professor at the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. This was followed by several other fellowships. He received a Fulbright and worked in Calcutta, India, for a year at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINC). He also received a fellowship from the nuclear physics department in the Darmstadt University of Technology (TU Darmstadt) in Germany, where he worked during the summer of 1983. In addition, he was the recipient of a three-year NATO fellowship for nuclear theory. His research was supported by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for many years.
Dr. Sperber is survived by his wife of 46 years, Ora Sperber of Geneva; his son and daughter-in-law, Dr. Ron and Laura (Noel) Sperber and grandson, Nathan Daniel Sperber, of Geneva; his sister, Alyssa Leshem of Boca Raton, Fla.; and stepdaughter, Tammy Baran of Reisterstown, Md.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (http://michaeljfox.org).