Mark Bolsterli

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Mark Bolsterli (October 3, 1930, New Haven, Connecticut – May 19, 2012, Santa Fe, New Mexico) was an American theoretical physicist, specializing in nuclear physics.[1]

Biography[edit]

Born on October 3, 1930 to Frances (Hipple) and Arthur Mark Bolsterli in New Haven, Connecticut, Mark Bolsterli attended high school in Webster Groves, Missouri. He was an Eagle Scout. He graduated in 1955 from Washington University in St. Louis with a Ph.D. in physics.[1] His Ph.D. thesis A perturbation procedure for bound states of nuclei was supervised by Eugene Feenberg.[2] Bolsterli received a Fulbright Scholarship to England for the academic year 1955–1956, a fellowship to the Niels Bohr Institute for the academic year 1961–62, and a Guggenheim Fellowship to the University of Oxford for the academic year 1964–65.[1][3] At the University of Minnesota he was a professor from 1959 to 1969. He was a staff member of the Theoretical Physics Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1969 to 1991, when he retired.[2] He did research on the structure of atomic nuclei and mathematical physics. He was elected in 1963 a Fellow of the American Physical Society.[4]

His first wife, Margaret Jones, whom he met in the early 1950s when they were both graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis, became a well-known author. They had two sons, Eric (born 1957), and David (1959–2019).[5] During the 1960s, Mark and Margaret Bolsterli divorced. In 1971, he met Judith "Judy" Costlow (born 1946) when they were skiing in the Santa Fe Ski Basin. They married and over the years of their marriage they "skied, hiked, and bicycled in many parts of the world."[1] Mark and Judy Costlow in 1976 bicycled from Missoula, Montana to Yellowstone National Park and then to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In 2007 the couple went on a bicycle tour from Bariloche, Argentina to Puerto Montt, Chile.[6]

In 1981, they spent 8 months in Switzerland, the home of his father, where he worked at the Scientific Lab CERN. In 1992, he worked for the National Science Foundation in Washington DC overseeing grants in the physics field. He played the piano, spoke 6 languages, played squash most days in his healthy years, studied ancient Greek, read voraciously, loved classical music, opera, the Lensic Performing Arts Center where he ushered for almost 10 years, and crossword puzzles he did in ink.[1]

Mark Bolsterli died in 2019, aged 81, from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was survived by his wife, two sons, and extended family.[where?][1]

Selected publications[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Mark Bolsterli. Obituary (2012) Santa Fe New Mexican". Legacy.com.
  2. ^ a b "Mark Bolsterli". Physics Tree.
  3. ^ "Mark Bolsterli". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
  4. ^ "APS Fellow Archive". American Physical Society. (search on year=1963 and institution=University of Minnesota)
  5. ^ "Obituary. David Bolsterli". Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. 2019.
  6. ^ Pacheco, Ana (June 11, 2011). "A Wonderful Life: A bicyclist's tour de vivre". Santa Fe New Mexican.

External links[edit]