RONALD ROCKMORE

ROCKMORE--Ronald Marshall. We mourn the passing of Dr. Ronald Marshall Rockmore (August 10, 1930 - May 23, 2023). Ron was born in New York City to Nathan and Bess Rockmore, each of them the children of immigrants from Ukraine. Ron grew up on Long Island and then in Crown Heights and graduated from Samuel J. Tilden High School. A love of mathematics and nature led him first to a degree in mathematics from Brooklyn College and then a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University, under the direction of Robert Serber, perhaps best known as J. Robert Oppenheimer's righthand man on the Manhattan Project. He accomplished this while caring for his parents and brother, a disabled war veteran. Ron went on to a productive career in academia and physics research as a theoretical physicist spending the majority of his career at Rutgers University with frequent visits to international labs and schools for physics research (Los Alamos, Aspen, Brookhaven, Trieste, CERN, and Saclay). Ron was known for his careful work describing and predicting the results of subatomic particle interactions and was especially proud of an early result referenced at least once by others as "The Rockmore Theorem." Retirement was filled with travel, painting, drawing, and regular outings in New York City to the opera, symphony, and ballet. But the achievement he was most proud of was his family. He is predeceased by his wife Miriam, with whom he enjoyed 59 years of marriage, full of travel and culture. He was a doting father to his sons Adam and Daniel and their wives Alicia and Ellen, and a loving Grandpa to Lucy, Alex, Shayna, and Rachel. He will be missed for his fierce loyalty, sharp mind, keen wit, and boisterous laugh. Ron believed that anyone in need deserved a hand and would have welcomed a gift you gave in his honor to a Jewish charity that works in that spirit. May his memory be for a blessing.