Stuart Alan Rice

Stuart Rice was my mentor and thesis advisor from 1984-1988. I remember him for his warm, upbeat, and supportive nature. A couple of stories: I went to Stuart's office to apologize for wasting a couple of months or more of computation time after a visiting scientist identified an error I made in understanding how to use a force field. He responded with "You know how you could have prevented that mistake? ... You could have sat around and done nothing during that time."

Another time I was mulling over how close to time a flight back from the conference to a bus schedule. Stuart replied that there were two schools of thought "If you miss a flight it is a disaster" and "If you never miss one you have wasted too much time at airports"

I had the good fortune of being a research associate of Stuart Rice at The James Franck Institute for two years from July 1972. Coming from the spartan research environment of his good friend Robert Zwanzig the Rice group at The University of Chicago was incredibly exciting with 10-15 excellent young people doing research over a large area of physical chemistry and parts of physics as well. Stuart managed to be interested in, and keep up with, a huge number of both theoretical and experimental problems in focus at the time. In those two years I managed to get into two fundamental problem areas which have been formative for my career, density functional theory of fluids and ergodic properties of quantum dynamics. Despite his great commitments Stuart was always accessible for discussion and responded quickly to written reports on progress. He opened up new and exciting vistas in science for me and prepared me for the greatly satisfying career in research I have had. In the best tradition of science he provided the shoulders that I, and his many young associates, needed to stand on as we aspired to independence as scientists. I am ever grateful. Sture Nordholm

It is sad news for the whole Chemical Physics community and
a particular sad news for Stuart's family, friends, all those who did
know him personally and in particular for those who had the privilege
to share professional friendship with him.
Stuart played a crucial role in my scientific career which took a new
turn during my University of Chicago years when I had the privilege of
spending a couple of productive years in Stuart's group. The years
to come - and as a matter of fact - my career would certainly not have
been the same without those fruitful Chicago years.

The click probably ticked the day I left a hand written draft of a manuscript
on Stuart's desk. The same afternoon I found a note from Stuart on my desk
saying "come and see me". I was a little skeptical as to what to expect. And
Stuart reacted: "This is the best piece of work you've done since you've been
in Chicago", this was a major encouragement to a young scientist.
And indeed I guess it turned out to be the real start to my scientific career.

Pr Jean Pierre Boon
Physics Department CP231
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Brussels - 1050 Belgium
Ph: +32 2 650 5527
E-mail: [email protected]
homepages.ulb.ac.be/~jpboon/

Ruth, I am so sorry to hear of the passing or your husband. Condolences to you and your family. I will keep you all in my prayers.

Dorothy Burnett