Paul DeCarli

Paul Scribner DeCarli

1930 -August 4, 2013

Redwood City

Growing up on the DeCarli dairy farm in the delta near Stockton, Paul began his studies at Stanford in 1948. He served with the US Army from 1952 to 1954, returned to Stanford, and finished his B.Sc in Materials Science in 1956.

Paul worked on shock effects in materials at the Stanford Research Institute, now known as SRI International. He and his colleagues were the first to use shock to form amorphous quartz, and to synthesize diamond, maskelynite and stishovite; he and coauthors were the first to experimentally demonstrate the shock origin of melt veins in meteorites and the entrapment of noble gasses in shocked meteorites. When Paul retired, he turned his attention to meteoritics and planetary science.

Paul the bassoonist and his wife Anne the oboist played woodwind chamber music with friends in their home weekly for most of the 53 years of their marriage; in recent years Paul also played in the South Bay Community Orchestra.

Paul is survived by his wife Anne, son John and daughter-in-law Rhea, daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Thomas Quirk; sisters Madeleine Murphy and Elisabeth Baker; brothers Peter and Ralph; and many dear cousins, nephews and nieces, and grandnephews and grandnieces.