Broida Prize

Obituary of Prof. Herbert P. Broida 

Herbert P. Broida, 57, died 9 April 1978. Broida's professional career was divided almost equally between the National Bureau of Standards (1949-63) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (1963-78). He joined the staff of the National Bureau of Standards, in Washington, DC, in the newly established high-temperature spectroscopy program. His work in this area, which followed directly from his graduate studies on the thermal hydrogen-oxygen reaction led to a long-lasting interest in the chemical and spectroscopic properties of free radicals and in the application of spectroscopic methods to studies of energy-transfer processes in systems containing excited species. From his earliest years at NBS, his professional career was characterized by several remarkable features: an outstanding record of productivity (well over 200 publications); a unique ability to work with and to stimulate others in many areas of physics, chemistry, instrumentation, and medical physics (more than 140 collaborators and co-authors); and a phenomenal breadth of scientific interests (high temperature gas-phase processes, low temperature matrix isolation of radicals, atmospheric and solar physics, medical instrumentation and physics, laser physics and chemistry, and surface science).

 A characteristically ingenious experiment performed with John Pellam in 1956 demonstrated the trapping of nitrogen atoms and other radicals in rare gas matrices at liquid helium temperatures. In response to the need to evaluate the possibility of using trapped radicals for the storage of energy, Broida organized the Free Radicals Research Program at NBS (1956-59). (Approaching the problem of program management in his own unconventional way, he assembled a research group of more than 50 scientists from university, industry, and government laboratories, stimulated them by his own enthusiasm, and won their respect and admiration by his scientific skills and leadership.) For his contributions in carrying out this program, Broida received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for Exceptional Service.

His work in molecular spectroscopy at NBS earned him a series of other honors. In 1952 he was awarded a Simon Guggenheim Fellowship with which he spent a year at Imperial College, London. In 1956 he received the Arthur S. Fleming Award from the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., and from 1957 to 1963 he was a Research Associate at Georgetown University School of Medicine. In 1956, he was named Section Chief and Program Coordinator at NBS, and in 1959 he was awarded a Senior  National Science Foundation Fellowship to visit Cambridge University, England.
In 1963, responding to his love of the outdoors and the West, and a desire to teach, Broida joined the newly created department of physics at Santa Barbara. Without fanfare, his personality, his drive, his broad scientific knowledge and ability took over. He devoted himself to the growth of the department. He created a molecular-physics laboratory renowned throughout the world for research in combustion energy exchange, chemiluminescent reactions, laser-induced photoluminescence and excitation spectroscopy. He was one of the first to realize and use the potentiality of lasers for the study of molecules. (He put together apparatus to do complicated measurements in ways that delighted most experts.) More recently he became interested in the formation of submicron-size particles and at the time of his death, he had begun a program aimed at the elucidation of surface properties and their interaction with excited molecules and atoms.

He was founder of the Quantum Institute at UCSB, past chairman of the Division of Chemical Physics of The American Physical Society and at the time of his death, he was vice chairman and chairman elect of the Division of Electron and Atomic Physics. He was recently appointed to membership on the Advisory Committee to the National Academy of Sciences on the USSR and Eastern Europe.

Herbert Broida was a scientist of remarkable breadth and accomplishments, a teacher with an extraordinary devotion to students and a human being of the finest quality. He was the recipient of many honors and of the highest professional praise, yet he remained a humble man totally sacrificing of his time, talents and energy for the good of his colleagues, his students, the physics community and the University of California.

A. M. Bass
J. R. Fulco
D. O. Harris
V. Jaccarino
W. C. Walker
University of California, Santa Barbara