All of Caltech, and the cosmology community worldwide, is mourning the death of Andrew Lange. He was one of the world’s leading scientists, co-leader of the Boomerang experiment that provided the first precise measurement of the first acoustic peak in the cosmic microwave background. He took his own life Thursday night.
It’s hard to convey how unexpected and tragic this news is. Very few people combined Andrew’s brilliance as a scientist with his warmth as a person. He always had a sparkle in his eye, was enthusiastically in love with science and ideas, and was constantly doing his best to make Caltech the best possible place, not just for himself but for everyone else around him. He was one of the good guys. The last I spoke with him, Andrew was energetically raising funds for a new submillimeter telescope, organizing conferences, and helping plan for a new theoretical physics center. We are all walking around in shock, wondering how this could happen and whether we could have done anything to prevent it. Caltech has had several suicides this year — hard to make sense of any of them.
The message from Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau is below the fold. For any local readers, there’s contact info if you would like to talk to counselors for any reason.
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January 22, 2010
TO: The Caltech Community
FROM: Jean-Lou Chameau
It is with great sadness and regret that I must report to you the death of Professor Andrew Lange, a valued member of the Caltech faculty. Andrew was found this morning off campus, and it appears that he took his own life. Among the most difficult things that people have to deal with in life are tragedies of this sort, especially when they affect people that we know and care for; and Andrew was such a well-known, well-respected, and well-liked member of our community that many of us will be deeply affected.
Andrew came to Caltech in 1993 and was most recently the chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. He was a truly great physicist and astronomer who had made seminal discoveries in observational cosmology.
Andrew was a valued colleague and a close friend to many of us. His death is a source of great sadness to us all and our deepest sympathy goes out to his family, friends, and colleagues, all of whom mourn his loss.
We know this tragic news will come as a shock to everyone — faculty, staff, and students alike, even those of you who knew that Andrew had been struggling with personal issues. Many of us feel the need in times like these to reach out and seek help in dealing with the shock, and I urge anyone who wants help to seek it from family members, friends, faculty, and/or professional counselors. This is not only a reasonable thing to do, it is an important thing to do. I want to emphasize in particular that counselors are always available, 24-hours a day. Students should call the Counseling Center at 626-395-8331, while faculty, staff, and postdocs, should call the Staff and Faculty Consultation Center at 626-395-8360. In addition, the Counseling Center will be open on Saturday and Sunday from 10-3pm.
This cuts through my spirit and heart. Andrew was terrific, the best of the best among experimental physicists; warm and interactive and encouraging. I knew him mainly long ago at Berkeley, when he was just an amazing grad student, fun, energetic, the best.
To me, it shows how incomprehensible suicide is, how much a disease it it, how it can take people you least expect, just like a disease does. If it can take Andrew it can take anyone.
I knew Andrew through our kids. He was a great dad. He took time to befriend me even though he was obviously extremely busy. He was so caring and thoughtful. I am shocked beyond words by his death, and I feel so awful, especially for his family. We have lost a wonderful person.
Condolences to his family. I can only imagine what would lead him to make such a decision.
I’m at Caltech now. There has been little meaningful response to any of the recent tragedies. They formed a “Mental Health Task Froce”, charged with making things better (without any funding to do so). Still, I’ve heard most of the suicides were people who were already seeing therapists and using our mental health resources.
I still think it’s a crappy year to have cut our mental health benefits to save a buck.
Thanks to everyone who contributed their remembrances of Andrew. I’m glad to have read them. I just got back from a meeting at Caltech — stunned faces across the campus.
Why are the good ones taken and the bad ones left behind? Andy was no doubt one of the good ones. What are you doing to the place, President Chameau?
I did not have the privilege of knowing Andrew Lange, and am very sorry to hear this news.
It’s normal for friends and acquaintances afterwards to retroactively see signs and to ask if they did enough, or blame themselves, or seek a rationalized explanation in outside forces (the university, economy, work pressures, etc). This is a normal expression of a type of survivor’s guilt. But recrimination with oneself or others after a suicide is also something that is destructive if carried too far. Scientists, in particular, are trained to seek an explanation for everything – but it is an individual act and unfortunately essentially not subject to our kind of explication.
That’s not to ignore the pressures of a modern life or to diminish the importance of looking out for people, and offering counseling/therapy and minimizing the stigma that many still attach to it. Sam up at #33 expressed a number of things well including what can be done and its limits. Ultimately, I think of irreversible acts as a catastrophic loss of perspective – a loss of the sense that storms will pass – and a reminder to the rest of us to set aside our everyday worries for a moment, to be grateful for the mundane details of existence and health that we take for granted.
Ben
p.s. There are a couple of comments above that suggest that suicide is classified as a crime in the US. It is generally not. Those laws have nearly all been repealed. There are laws against assisted suicide, which is another thing entirely.
This is a terrible loss to all of us.
I have a vivid memory of visiting Caltech not so long ago and blundering in to Andrew’s group meeting down in some inaccessible corner of Bridge or whatever building that was before Cahill got built. There were postdocs, graduate students, visitors, and Andrew…talking about the science, thinking about the possibilities, looking to the future, which is where all the latest news about the universe arrives. For a scientist, there’s nothing better than that.
The part that’s so hard for me to understand is how all of this serious fun and joyous anticipation of what comes next somehow came to seem unimportant. I’m not sleeping very well. I’m thinking about Andrew.
As a long time co-worker and an admirer of Andrew, his work and his personal charm, I can find no words to express the sense of loss we all feel. None of us who worked with him can make sense of the discrepancy between the person we knew and admired and the one who felt the need to leave life.
That said, I must take vigorous exception to JLC’s criticism in #55 of President Chameau. It is a totally unfair criticism of a man who has brought a deep sense of commitment and compassion to the Caltech campus. JLC is taking a cheap shot at a man he obviously knows nothing about. His comment is untrue and despicable. Also, who are these bad ones who are left behind? The Caltech faculty and students, who are among the very best in the world? The dedicated staff who support us? I challenge JLC to identify himself and his source of such misinformation.
“I don’t know that the law was necessarily created out of religious intent. In general it seems to be a decision made along the idea that it is the governments job to protect its citizens. I see it as a law similar to the ones which force you to wear a seatbelt in a moving vehicle or those that won’t allow you to use illegal drugs, both of which I wouldn’t characterize as being religious laws as much as self-preservation laws.”
Two differences. In the case of suicide, the intent to kill or be killed is the whole point. Thus, it seems rather bizarre that someone could be deterred due to fear of breaking a law. Second, if someone is killed while not wearing a seatbelt in an accident which was not his own fault, it is difficult to assess the guilt of the other side (an unintentional death is usually punished more than unintentional scratches and bruises); the only option would be to say that people who cause wrecks (drunk driving etc) which kill people without seatbelts aren’t punished at all for the death, which seems rather extreme. The main point, though, is the first one (especially the cases where there is capital punishment for attempted suicide.)
This is a reminder that for many people there is a vast difference and disconnect between who they are on the outside and the way they feel about themselves on the inside. It is sad to think that a person who accomplished so much and meant so much to others, faced such overwhelming internal struggles. May he find peace as he journeys into the Great Unknown.
Andrew, you were a true advisor, colleague and inspiration to my husband. There is a hole in the astronomy/physics community. We are reeling; and you are missed.
I did not know Andrew Lange, but I can’t stop thinking about him.
It makes me realize how fragile we all are.
When the young students in Caltech took their own life, there was the thought that they did not have enough support, they were overwhelmed with the academic pressure, and they were young and didn’t have any one to talk to.
But he had everything to live for, he was established, he knew it all, he gave so much to others, and it didn’t help.
I wish that life wouldn’t just go on as everything is the same. I wish Caltech would stop everything and have an open discussion about what happened, what we can do to help anyone in our community that needs help and support. Airports are closed when an airplane crushes to prevent more crushes, to make a serious investigation in what went wrong. What made it possible? I wish we would do the same here. Not just an open day in the counseling center, something more than that. We have to commit as a community to help one another, to take our lives seriously, above all.
I didn’t know Andrew Lange, but people wrote here about a great scientist and a great man, a role model. I wish his death will drive a change in our community, in our commitment to our lives.
Oh man. That’s terrible. I still remember Andrew giving the Boomerang first results announcement colloquium in Chicago, and there was a huge “whoa” when he showed the first peak.
RIP
#61
Sherry’s ccomments are very perceptive.
Depending on the way we grow up, we may tend to be over-controlled…there may be a private part of our lives we don’t, won’t and/or feel we can’t share…even with our most trusted friends.
There is something to be said in favor of (insistently) being who and what we really are. That tack may not always make everybody happy… but we find out who our real friends are! One thing that gets politicians (for example) in trouble, is that they want everybody to like them…they have a need to be “all things to all people” in order to succeed in their chosen profession.
That approach to life definitely has a downside! For most people, how many friends do they need anyway…how many can they afford? There is no reason for most of us to try to share everybodies values. One really good friend is a sure-cure for loneliness!
About that “great unknown”. Young men in the islands considered suicide an act of bravery…when the truth was that for most of them it was an attempt to escape an intolerable situation. That is why we immediately sent them on a little vacation when we realized they were “near the edge”…we helped them “escape” and at the same time bolstered their sagging ego a bit.
Many of the concepts of science fiction may in fact be already a real part of the world we experience. Death may be a worm-hole back to the delivery room or elsewhere (the great unknowm). Death might also be a ticket to nowhere! To some depressed people that last alternative sounds pretty good…but is that alternative correct? We need to be careful with our assumptions!
All people are mortal…we all, sooner or later experience death. My point to those considering suicide was that death is much better experienced later than sooner. When natural forces take us to the edge of eternity…what can we do about it? Willingly or very unwillingly, we go.
However to tempt death by living fast and loose, or actually deliberately committing suicide is most ill-advised! The men in the islands acted like they were Christopher Columbus off exploring some worm-hole, but their physics was far from straight!…in fact, they had never studied physics. We wouln’t want to get in a bind down there. It would be great to find “dear old dad”, but what would happen if we got stuck and couldn’t find our way out?
Life is a gift…it meets most of the criteria of a gift anyway. Making the most of what we have, it seems to me, is important.
There were suicides ‘way back when I was at Robinson / Astro Library. Group discussions followed, where those who worked with Peter were able to talk about what they knew and to learn what they needed to know.
Silence about suicide– is deadly. Please, everyone, get together and share/learn as much as you can, then support everyone with whom you come into contact. Cox is right. We all need each other, and–more importantly–we all need to KNOW that we need each other.
Astro grad students on up to Div. Chairmen all need support from those important to them.
While I did not know Prof. Lange and was not on campus during his time, I am deeply touched by the sentiments shared here. Human life is truly fragile. Perhaps we tend to forget this when we see an exceptional person who leads us forward and treats us so well. Caltech is a rare and special place – at least it was during my too-short time there and I am greatly encouraged that Prof. Lange seems to be one of many who expanded that heritage. My profound condolences go to all his colleagues and loved ones.
At a time like this, one wants to contribute to easing the burden some way, some how. I can only think of a charge I once received from a widely feared, aged Ivy League professor: “Ask ‘how can I help?’ then just do that very well, report back and ask again.” I’ve used this simple approach in times like this. I’ve been stunned by the range of requests I’ve fulfilled, by what I’ve gained and by the response of those I’ve served. Part of the “secret” of this charge is to ask frequently, ask unbidden. Ask once or twice during your day. People in all circumstances are receptive to such a simple and direct offer in today’s world. If all you hear back is “No, but thanks for asking” then you have changed the world.
There’s been quite a few years since I was a senior at Caltech and Andrew was my senior thesis adviser. He was the most nurturing adviser I ever had, he was always smiling and supportive and I really regarded him as a father.
When I got into more grad schools and was looking for advice on where to go he told me this: “Imagine yourself 3 years from now waking up in the morning. Are you happy of yourself?” I followed his fatherly advice, though imagination and reality are different, but now when more than 3 years passed since then, I see that happiness is relative to the bad moments we go through.
On a different note, I have always thought of Caltech as a community where everybody is a dreamer, but then the cruel reality cuts those dreams short in the name of safety or efficiency. We were young, we needed to express our enthusiasm and energy through a lot of crazy things, we had a fire pot in the house I was in where I was in, we used to go to the desert in the middle of nowhere and blow a lot of things, we used to flood the courtyard and turn it into a huge pool. The administration was ALWAYS coldheartedly against us trying to keep the “image” of Caltech “clean” and keep everybody “safe”. Where is that image? We need people whose crazy dreams are likely to become reality, if you kill those dreams in the people who are there, Caltech will surely die and its image will die soon after. I was last year on campus and I saw the South Houses with big metal gates around, it was so sad, they looked like a concentration camp.
The campus has one smile less now and it should be careful, there are not so many left.
I’m really late to the discussion, but I have a perspective from someone in the wake of multiple suicides.
I was a former student when two suicides affected the Caltech community, and I was left reeling. I struggled with suicidal thoughts well after I graduated. It is very likely I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for several things.
First, I immediately went and got extensions for my exams and courses. The Dean was quite understanding. There is no reason to try and finish those problem sets if you’re distraught.
Second, I took time off from school. Caltech is not a good environment for students, and this is not an administrative problem only. It is a deep-rooted problem which, as others have mentioned, is the tip of the iceberg, at other colleges too.
Third, I talked to people, but not in time. The Dean was good, the Counseling Center was good, but family and peers are essential. Students at Caltech think, that since they’re bright, or exceptional, or somehow different, that their thoughts and emotional life are unrelatable to others. This is a wrong thought. By the time I reached out to my friends, emotional problems had already piled up more than I could handle.
If you are students, and you are reading this, remember: do not assume that since you are smart, you are safe, and you can think your way out of suicide or depression. Rational introspection is not the way out, and you cannot always answer your own questions. If you are in emotional pain, find someone you trust to talk to. Now.
This is terrible. Having had the pleasure last year of a visit with Andrew
and his group at Caltech, whose excitement and camaraderie were palpable,
I can only imagine what those very close to him are feeling. Not to mention
the tragedy of what he must have been going through. Best wishes to all
those close to him.
There seems to be a tendency in some of the comments to associate Lange’s suicide with other recent Caltech suicides. Based on other comments, however, his seems independent of the others. While Caltech might need to take some action with respect to the “Caltech suicides”, citing Lange’s isn’t a good step in that direction if it is unrelated.
Many comments on these blogs seems to polarize around the issues of 1. the responsibility of Caltech 2. the connection between the suicide of Andrew Lange and the 3 student suicides last year (not to mention those of students/colleagues 1 or 2 years out). I believe this both simplifies and obfuscates the problem. Scientific giftnessness does not correlate with emotional giftedness; if anything, the opposite might be true. And here enters the role of teachers, especially those teaching liberal arts to science students. They are the canaries in the coal mine, so to speak. By the very nature of the personal work/interaction they require, they intuit problems early on. They intervene early on. They provide support early on. Unfortunately, they can also be dismissed early on, especially when budgets get tight and those doing the cutting are utterly clueless to the role they play in the coal mine
It is hard to express how sad this news is.
I did not have direct interaction with Andrew Lange, but I remember vividly a talk by him on the BOOMERANG around 2001. At that time, I was a postdoc who became increasingly uncomfortable with problems in academia. Andrew Lange’s talk was one of these rare talks that was so inspiring and reassuring — showing in a convincing way why physics can still be fun and worthy, and despite all the pressure to survive, one could still focus on important problems, give credits to others, and be communicative of the deep and difficult results.
The New York Times’ obituary for Andrew:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/science/space/28lange.html?ref=science
A Week Went/Gone By
In silence so loud, with words unsaid,
Do others really know what’s in my head?
For I think about the loss each and every day,
But in all the blank faces don’t know what to say.
I suppose neither do others, but I don’t know
And I’m not sure if I should say so
Or should anyone?
Or should no one?
But that seems bad,
As a person recently died who was so sad,
Alone in his own thought and feeling
To leave me and others behind reeling
Not knowing what to do or say
And wondering if it’s really right and okay
to talk about it all out loud anyway?
PHL 1/28/10