Physicist Sumner Davis has died at 84
San Francisco - Berkeley - Psychologist Jack Block, 85, has died Positive prospects for California's green businesses, study finds Chancelllor Birgeneau announces senior-management transition plans, as Brostrom accepts UCOP position UC to cut fewer freshmen from fall 2010 enrollment NSF grant to launch world's first open-source genetic parts production facility - University of California, Berkeley, physicist Sumner P. Davis, a beloved teacher who devoted his life to the precise measurement of light emitted by molecules found in the sun and distant stars, died Dec. 31, 2008, at a care facility in El Cerrito, Calif., after a brief illness. He was 84. A classical optical spectroscopist, Davis for many years made laboratory measurements of the light emitted by molecules found in the sun and stars so that astronomers could recognize the molecules' wavelength signature in solar and stellar spectra. One molecule common in the sun, cyanogen (CN), occupied Davis throughout his career, although he and his students measured and analyzed many other atomic and molecular spectra using a variety of techniques, including echelle spectrometry, Fabry-Pérot interferometry and Fourier transform spectroscopy. Such spectra also reveal the quantum mechanical structure of atoms and nuclei. Davis supervised 36 Ph.D.
