Burton Richter, 1931-2018

from Willem Langeveld:   
Burt was largely responsible for the way my career developed. When I was nearing the end of my postdoc position at UC Riverside in 1989 (working at SLAC on TPC/Two-Gamma), I could have accepted an offer I received from Argonne to work on the Zeus experiment at HERA. When Marvin Weinstein mentioned my likely departure, Burt called me into his office and made me an offer I couldn't refuse: take a position at SLAC in the computer department and spend half my time supporting SLAC's increasing number of Commodore Amiga computers (including his of course!) and the other half on any experiment I wanted. This greatly affected the rest of my life: it allowed me to work with a large number of excellent scientists and wonderful colleagues, I met my future wife at SLAC (she still works there), and we still live in the bay area! Even after my departure from SLAC in 2005, I was always welcome in Burt's office on the occasions I was able to visit SLAC. To this day, I am very grateful to Burt for how it all turned out. Our heartfelt   
condolences go out to Laurose, Matt and Elizabeth. Burt was one of the greats!

from Adele Panofsky to Laurose Richter:

I am so sorry to learn of Burt's death. He was a dear, dear friend to me and Pief, just as you are also. I will miss him so much. You and Burt and Pief and I go back such a long way, and the years have really flown by. I will never forget.

Of course, I can't forget the morning when Pief was in his bath, and the phone call came about the great discovery!

And I love to think about your and Burt's wedding party at my house. It was a wonderful event and rich in memories. Our friend Calvin did the catering, and early that day he came to me concerned about the recipe for the wedding punch. This will be really strong, he said, but if it is what they want, I will make it. And he did. Everyone became very, very jolly as the party went on. The guys decorated Burt's little red roadster with the usual "Just Married" sign and the tin cans. But then they had An Idea. They tied a dead fish to the muffler as a prank. The prank backfired, because our two cats found the fish and ate it off. Even our two cats had a special day at your wedding party!

All my love to you, Laurose, at this sad time.

From Hirotaka Sugawara:

When I first became DG of KEK , Burt just took over the DG position of SLAC after Panofsky. 
Burt and I worked together towards the construction of B-factory occasionally competing and occasionally collaborating.  
Burt and I shared a common passion on the linear collider and worked closely together. When I told Burt about the long base line neutrino beam, he showed strong interest and he offered some SLAC dipole magnets to be used in KEK. It was very helpful.  
Burt and I worked together in many committees including ICFA, US-Japan Committee for High Energy Physics, Subcommittee of UNESCO on large facility, FULC for ILC, etc..  
There are many, many photos but I attach just one ....

From Judy Franz:

It was with great sadness that I learned that one of my heroes, Burt Richter, had died. Although we had no physics research overlap, I was lucky to work with Burt for ten years on serving the physics community.

I met Burt for the first time in 1994. He was then President of APS and I was the new Executive Officer. Burt became President during tumultuous times at APS. APS had just moved its longstanding headquarters from New York to College Park, MD, resulting in major staff turnover. Then he had to deal with me, the new EO, who had tons of APS experience but little administrative experience. This was probably no big deal for Burt with his history as director of SLAC, but I was very lucky to have him as the first of the 16 APS presidents with whom I worked. He was a wonderful mentor and a tremendous coach for me. He and I got things settled down at APS, and by the end of his term, I more or less knew what I was doing. During his years in APS leadership, he was always willing to use his entree as a Nobel Laureate to argue forcefully and effectively for the health and funding of the physics community.

By coincidence, Burt and I then got involved in IUPAP, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, at about the same time. Burt and I both attended our first IUPAP General Assembly in 1996 in Sweden, he as the incoming President Designate, and I as a member of the US Liaison Committee. At the next General Assembly that was held in 1999 in Washington, DC, Burt took over a president and I was elected Associate Secretary General. At that time the Secretary General was Rene Turlay, a French particle physicist, who unfortunately became ill. Because of this I almost immediately took over the administration of IUPAP, so that Burt and I were a team again - this time for 3 years.

As President of IUPAP, Burt’s message stressed environmentally sustainable development and stronger outreach to physicists in developing countries. But something special happened during the 1999 General Assembly. The issue of the worldwide underrepresentation of women in physics was raised and the formation of a Working Group on Women in Physics was proposed and accepted. It was Burt’s job as the new President to set this up, and he asked me to write a charge for the group and help him appoint the members. As a result of this, the first-ever International Conference on Women in Physics was held in 2002 in Paris at UNESCO Headquarters. 300 physicists from 65 countries attended. Burt opened the conference and stayed throughout. I think he was thrilled to see the excitement of the women, many of whom had never been outside their own countries. It was a major accomplishment and these conferences have continued every 3 years ever since.

Burt continued to work with APS on key physics-related issues. In 2009, when the US economy was in free fall, and the Obama administration was looking for places to invest money that would quickly lead to job creation, Burt worked tirelessly with a small group and got $8 billion directed to science research. His coworkers called him a ‘force of nature.’ He later chaired a major APS study on energy efficiency, which led him in 2010 to write the book “Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Climate Change and Energy in the 21st Century”, which received the Phi Beta Kappa science book of the year award.

The physics community rarely gets such a brilliant and dedicated champion. He was always ready to help individual scientists, but he was also intent on doing everything he could to promote science and science-based policy, and to save Planet Earth.