Barnett Charles Cook

1923 - 2018

Barnett Charles Cook

Clear Lake, IA - Barnett Charles Cook died July 12, 2018 at Clear Lake, Iowa, his summer residence for the past 28 years. Mr Cook was born on November 25, 1923, in Chicago, Illinois, to Harold Cook and his wife, Helen Willers Cook. He graduated from Maine Township High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, in 1941 and enlisted in the US Army Air Force in 1942. He studied electrical engineering at several US colleges before being deployed to Brazil, where he served on a communications team that received and relayed information between the African and Pacific theaters. He was discharged in 1945 and enrolled in Northwestern University, from which he received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He then joined the University of Chicago as a betatron engineer and began graduate work in the physics department. He received his PhD in physics from Chicago in 1954 and joined the faculty at Iowa State University (ISU).There he taught graduate and undergraduate classes, directed graduate students and applied his experimental and mathematical skills to conduct and publish research in the area of photonuclear physics. He took sabbaticals at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He met Laura Rypstat Richards, an ISU graduate student, at the Unitarian Fellowship of Ames and they were married in 1979. He was a loving stepfather to Anne Richards and husband Iraj (Atlanta), Paul Richards and wife, Elsa (Des Moines) and Steve Richards (Des Moines) and grandfather to Anne Apatiga Dragoo and Daniel Apatiga (Tampa) and Thomas Richards (Des Moines). He was predeceased by his sister, Roberta Van Keurn. His nieces Donna Carpenter, husband Bruce and Robin Wann, husband Tim, live in Santa Rosa, CA.

He retired in 1993 and moved to Tallahassee, where he and his wife enjoyed music, theater, and science programs at FSU, activities with the Faculty and Friends Club and traveled extensively. He was a member of the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Church of Tallahassee and served on the finance and endowment committees. He also served for ten years on the board of the UU United Nations Office which informs UU congregations about the service activities of the UN. Memorials may be made to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tallahassee, 2810 N. Meridian Road, Tallahassee, Fl 32312 or the UU United Nations Office, 777 UN Plaza, Suite 7G, New York 10017.