Edward Kevin Cornell

Cornell
Edward Kevin Cornell (Age 83)
Edward Kevin Cornell, physicist, teacher, woodworker, gentleman farmer, and beloved father and husband, died on August 31, 2025, in Fairfax, Virginia, from cardiac-related illness. He was 83.
Kevin was born in Manhattan, New York, the youngest of the four children of Julien Davies Cornell and Virginia Stratton Cornell. He attended the Putney School in Vermont for high school; Swarthmore College, where he majored in mathematics; and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a doctoral degree in physics. Kevin worked as a physics professor at American University; as a senior staff member in the U.S. Senate and at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and held leadership roles in alumni relations and development at American University, Grinnell College, and The George Washington University. Kevin discovered his true calling, teaching high school physics, at Georgetown Day School. He taught advanced-placement physics and statistics, advised the robotics club and science bowl team, and created a course in quantum mechanics that students clamored to take and found devilishly difficult. He was known by his colleagues for his direct style and lighthearted hijinks (such as handing out diplomas wearing a gorilla mask), and he was beloved by his students for interactive labs that sparked their love of physics and math (such as setting off liquid-nitrogen-powered bottle rockets in the school parking lot).
At various times in his life, Kevin was a skier, a tennis player, a sailor, a jogger, an equestrian, and a cyclist-but always a dominating croquet player. At the age of four, Kevin contracted polio and lived in a polio ward for several months, a formative experience he would vividly recall during the COVID pandemic. Despite muscle atrophy in his leg from the polio virus, Kevin played varsity tennis in college and continued playing brutally competitive games with his dad and brother on the family court in Central Valley, New York. On his farm in Maryland, he loved to ride his tractor (sometimes without purpose) and planted raspberry canes and fields of wildflowers that in late summer inspired passing motorists to pull over and take photographs of the picturesque red barn and colorful fields. Friends and family treasure his gifts of beautiful wooden bowls turned on a lathe in his wood shop. In colder weather, Kevin loved to sit in front of a wood fire with a dog at his feet and read spy novels. Overnight visitors could expect to be awakened by the smell of sizzling bacon and the sound of Vivaldi playing throughout the house.
Kevin will be remembered by his family for his ever-present sense of humor; his creative dance moves at family weddings; his love of dogs; his insistence on the superiority of McDonald's "fresh brewed" diet coke; his firm belief that he could fix or build almost anything; never pulling punches in a chess game but always letting his opponent take back a foolish move; his rhubarb pie; and doing "Bad Santa" first.
Kevin is survived by his wife, Pat Cornell; his children, Emily Weiss, Jen Cornell, Portia Cornell, Ed Cornell, and stepdaughter Emily Appel-Newby; grandchildren, Mckinley, Cassie, Emmett, Cal, Eli, Jack, Danny, Kit, and Timmy; his elder sister, Sheila Lunke; and numerous nieces and nephews who refer to him as the "fun one" of his generation.
A memorial in celebration of Kevin's life will be held on Saturday, October 4, 2025, at 3 p.m. at the Friends Meeting of Washington, 2111 Decatur Pl NW, Washington, DC 20008. Attendees are welcomed to wear a pink shirt in homage to Kevin's sartorial credo that it was the color of "real men." In lieu of flowers, think of Kevin each time you wear pink.