Thomas A. Romanowski

1925 - 2010
Thomas A. Romanowski passed away peacefully at home on Sunday, September 19, 2010 in Santa Fe, NM. He was 85 years old. Born in Warsaw, Poland on April 17, 1925, he immigrated to the US in 1946. He was a veteran of the Korean War, having served three years in the US Army. He received his BS in 1952 from MIT and his MS in 1955 from Case Institute of Technology and PhD in Physics in 1957 from Case Institute of Technology.

He had a long and distinguished career as a high energy physicist, holding a 28-year appointment as Professor of Physics at Ohio State University until his retirement in 1992. During his career his experiments took him and his family to high energy physics laboratories in the US and Europe, working at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Saxonburg, PA, Argonne and Fermi National Laboratories in Chicago, CERN in Switzerland, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and DESY in Germany. Results of his many experiments extended the knowledge of the properties and forces existing between sub nuclear particles. Beginning as a post doc at Carnegie in 1958 he studied pi mesons created by 450 MEV Proton Synchroton; at CERN in 1961 he studied the decay of K mesons; at Argonne and Fermi he formed his own research groups to study the heavy "strange" particles that were created in proton collisions; at Los Alamos in 1985 he studied the properties of the elusive neutrino particle; and at his final experiment at DESY in 1989 he investigated high energy collisions between electrons and protons. After retiring from OSU he joined the Department of Energy in Washington, DC, as a Senior Physicist assessing proposals and recommending funding for experiments in high energy physics.

A life-long devotee of classical music and modern military history, he was also passionate about the outdoors, spending most of his free time hiking, camping and restoring his ranch in the White Cloud Mountains in Idaho. He is survived by Carmen, his devoted wife of 58 years; his two daughters, Alina Romanowski of Washington, DC, and Dominique Romanowski of Malibu, CA; four loving grandchildren, Julia, Lisa, Eric and Nicholas; and his sister Dr. Teresa Romanowska Lakshmanan. So many people were touched by his intellect, his curiosity, and his dedication to learning. He will be deeply missed.