Winthrop W. Smith

Winthrop Ware Smith (Aug. 8, 1936 - Apr. 7, 2025) was born in New York City, son of G. Milton Smith, Jr. and Frances B. Smith. He was predeceased by his beloved wife, Anne, and a younger brother, David.
Known as an active, friendly and respected figure in the University of Connecticut / Storrs-Mansfield community, Win was a talented research scientist, dedicated musician and music lover, and joyful hiker and skier who in later years enjoyed pickleball and riding his bike around town.
Win grew up in Radburn, NJ, the son of a music teacher and a City College psychology professor, and showed an interest in physics from a young age.
A graduate of Amherst College and MIT, he began his post-doctorate physics career in Boulder, Colorado (where he met his wife, Anne Keller Smith) at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), then becoming an assistant professor at Columbia University during the turbulent years of the late 1960s. He came to the University of Connecticut at Storrs in 1969, where he had a long and illustrious career teaching and performing research as a professor in the Department of Physics and the Institute of Materials Science.
Win was active in several research areas within his field of atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, publishing over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and enjoying strong collaborations with scientists all over the world. He participated in research at several national laboratories, and took research sabbaticals at: JILA (University of Colorado); Stanford University and the Stanford Research Institute in California; the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany; the University of Aarhus, Denmark; MIT; and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
He was a frequent attendee, contributor and organizer of conferences in various specialties within the AMO field, and spent a year as a Program Officer for the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC.
Over the years, Win taught and trained many students and researchers at every level, many of whom went on to academic careers of their own. He taught a wide variety of subjects, from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics and beyond, and took great pleasure in motivating his students and seeing them learn. He remained active long past his official retirement in 2009, mentoring graduate students as a research professor and Professor Emeritus, and going into the office almost daily until halted by the Covid pandemic ten years later.
Win was an honored member of the American Physical Society (where he served as an officer in several divisions), the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, Phi Beta Kappa, and the scientific research honor society Sigma Xi, and he received the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Research Award for research in Germany.
A lifelong musician, Win enjoyed taking organ lessons as a graduate student in Boston, building his own harpsichord during his post-doc years, and more recently singing with the Hartford Chorale and then the UConn Festival Chorus. Until recently, he still occasionally played the organ in the town church in Randolph, NH, where he and his family were longtime summer residents.
Win had a strong commitment to his community, serving on the Mansfield Town Ethics Board and Democratic Town Committee, as well as on the UConn Faculty Senate and a term as AAUP (union) President.
Win will be remembered for his kindness, community involvement, and academic excellence. He will be greatly missed by his daughter, Sarah Smith of Gloucester, MA, beloved cousins, nieces, nephews, and many dear friends and colleagues.
A memorial celebration will be held on Saturday, May 31, 2025 at 1:30 p.m. in the von der Mehden Recital Hall on the University of Connecticut Storrs campus.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Win's memory to the Anne and Win Smith Fellowship Fund for graduate students in physics (by check to: The UConn Foundation, Inc. at this address: 2390 Alumni Drive Unit 3206, Storrs, Connecticut 06269), or to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU: (https://action.aclu.org/give/make-gift-aclu-someones-memory).
Arrangements by the Campbell Funeral Home, 61 Middle Street, Gloucester, MA 01930. Condolences at www.campbellfuneral.com