David E. Fisher

David E. Fisher passed away on June 28 at his home in East Orleans, on Cape Cod, shortly after his ninety-first birthday.

He was born to Grace (néeSpicehandler) and Henry Fisher in Philadelphia and spent childhood summers with his parents, his sister, and cousins at the beach in Atlantic City, where he developed a lifelong devotion to quoits and bodysurfing— enthusiasms he passed on to his children decades later on Cape Cod. After graduating from Central High School in Philadelphia, he headed north to Trinity College in Hartford. There he studied science, wrote poems and short stories, and became an All-American fencer, placing fifth in the epee division of the NCAA championships. More momentously, he met a local Hartford girl named Leila Katz.

A few months after he graduated in 1954, they married and drove their new used Studebaker down to Gainesville, Florida, where he began a PhD program in nuclear chemistry at the University of Florida. After three years in Gainesville, they spent a final year in Tennessee, where he did his dissertation research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (and also acted in the community theater there.) He then did his postdoctoral research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, where their daughter Lisabeth was born. In 1960 David became an assistant professor at Cornell University.

In six years in Ithaca, David taught, did research, and acted in the Barnes Players theater group, and he and Leila made lifelong friends among the vibrant university community. Sons Ronald and Marshall were born, and David also realized a lifelong ambition by learning to fly, on a Piper Cub at Tompkins County Airport. He later flew himself to many scientific meetings and also terrified his wife by flying her and their small children to visit family in Hartford and Philadelphia. In childhood he had avidly followed the ongoing aviation exploits of World War Two, and as an adult he became a self-taught expert on all aspects of that war.

In 1966, David took a position as professor of marine geology and geophysics at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, next door to the Miami Seaquarium on Virginia Key. He soon became involved with the Miami Actor's Company, a semiprofessional repertory theater. In May 1967 he played the leading role in Lorraine Hansberry's "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window," and later that year the group produced David's own play, "The Courtesy Not to Bleed," starring Ray Aranha. He also continued writing fiction, having already published a number of stories in magazines. Writing time was squeezed into his day job as a scientist and professor, of course. As he sped his MG down North Kendall Drive, up U.S. 1, and over the Rickenbacker Causeway, or while lunching on the beach, he dictated into a miniature tape recorder. At night he'd transcribe his day's work on his typewriter. After he made edits, Leila would type up the final manuscript.

In 1971, Doubleday published his first novel, "Crisis." Over the next four decades, he published twenty-five books--ten novels and the rest non-fiction books on hurricanes, the development of radar in WWII, the invention of television, the ideas of Einstein, and other topics. (Three of his last five books were co-written with his son Marshall.) His 1988 book, "Fire and Ice," was one of the first to warn of global warming. For another book, "Across the Top of the World," he traveled to the North Pole on a Soviet icebreaking ship. He also published more than one hundred scientific papers and traveled the world, speaking at conferences in Europe, Australia, and the Far East. His research— studying the formation of the earth by measuring the rare gases trapped in ocean rocks— helped establish the critical role of tectonic plate movement and sea-floor spreading in the evolution of modern continents.

He loved the classroom as much as his science and writing and was a beloved teacher at UM, where he also taught undergraduates. One of his courses, The Creation of the Universe (for non-science majors), was a longtime campus favorite. He also taught a class on science and religion; he enjoyed pitting his scientific view of the universe against any faith-based one, always with playful wit and an insistence on rational thought. Memorably, in 1982, he debated Henry Morris, who was known as the father of modern creationism, at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church before a sellout audience of over a thousand. ("I haven't addressed this large an audience since my bar mitzvah," he deadpanned.)

David finally retired from the University in 2010, and after forty-four years in Miami, full of work, raising children, and many wonderful friendships, he and Leila retired to Cape Cod and the house they had bought as a summer home years earlier.

He was a fixture in the Cape Cod Old Timers Softball League for two decades, until illness proved the end of a lifetime's worth of sports: fencing, basketball, softball, and above all tennis. He taught courses in the Snow Library's Lifetime Learning program, some with Leila (classic movies), some alone (science and religion, climate change, history of science, and his old specialty, the creation of the universe). And he continued to write, in his late eighties completing a history of the development of quantum mechanics intended for a lay audience.

He turned ninety in fine form but was soon thereafter diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His final year was marred by several hospital stays, but he continued to enjoy life, including watching a movie at home nearly every night with his wife and playing lively Scrabble games with his children and grandchildren. And he read— and read, and read. Novels, history, science. To the very end he was absorbing knowledge and literature, usually a novel and a history tome going at the same time, plus an e-book on his laptop for reading during breakfast. In his final weeks he was reading both Agatha Christie and Jane Austen, as well as histories of the Eisenhower and Kennedy presidencies.

Grateful to have had him so long but missing him badly are his wife, Leila; his children, Lisabeth DiLalla (and Dave) of Carbondale, IL, Ron Fisher (and Joey) of Houston, TX, and Marshall Fisher (and Mileta Roe) of West Stockbridge, MA; his grandchildren, Matthew DiLalla, Shaina DiLalla, Satchel Fisher, Bram Fisher, Jackson Fisher, and Louis Fisher; his sister, Deborah Stern of Atlantic City, NJ, his brother- and sister-in-law, William and Sandra Katz of Windsor, CT, and many loving nieces and nephews.

Donations in David's memory may be made to Snow Library in Orleans at https://friendsofsnowlibrary.org/donate/.