Bruce Winstein, an experimental physicist at the University of Chicago, passed away this morning. He had been fighting cancer.
Bruce was a fantastic physicist and person. He became well-known as a particle experimentalist, forgoing giant collaborations to work in small groups where he could do something unique. He was the leader of the KTeV experiment at Fermilab, which measured the very subtle “direct” CP violation effect. He won the Panofsky Prize from the American Physical Society for this work.
In an especially impressive move, he then decided that he wanted to switch fields, into cosmology. He took a sabbatical year and went to Princeton, where he basically worked as a grad student in Suzanne Staggs’ lab, learning the trade of cosmic microwave background observations from the ground up. Then he came back to Chicago, where he started and was the founding director of the Center for Cosmological Physics, later the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. Once that was up and running, he moved back into research full-time, becoming a leader of the QUIET collaboration.
Bruce was a great friend, and a valued mentor while I was at Chicago. He was one of the few faculty members to reach out and invite me into his office when I arrived, and was always ready to talk about physics — or music. He was a true audiophile, and connoisseur of jazz in particular. It was Bruce who introduced me to the music of Von Freeman (who just won the prestigious Rosenberger Medal from the University of Chicago).
Bruce died far too young. We’ll miss him greatly.
Charon, if you exhibited the same discretion in your work under Bruce as in your posting here, I have an entirely different interpretation of your personal history.
I was a grad student on KTeV. Bruce was already transitioning to cosmology when I arrived at Chicago, so I didn’t get to work with him very much, but when we talked about KTeV it was amazing how well he remembered all the details and would get to the heart of the problem so quickly. Talking to him was always good for a morale boost too, because he would get so excited and that enthusiasm was contagious. He often stopped by the student office to chat about sports, music, or running. The last time I saw him was about a month ago at his retirement celebration; while he was obviously ill, he was warm, gracious, engaged, and enthusiastic just as he always had been. He was the driving force behind the research that I have so loved and he was an example of life well-lived. He was a larger-than-life figure in my life and it is hard to comprehend that he is gone. My thoughts are with his friends and family.
It is always sad to lose someone so talented and unique.
Bruce taught an experimental physics class I took when I was a grad student at Chicago; at the time he was still a particle physicist. About 6-7 years later, he was a cosmologist and director of KICP while I was a postdoctoral fellow there. Most recently, he visited to Michigan to give a colloquium, and over dinner with a few of us, he recalled the golden years of physics at Chicago by recounting fascinating anecdotes involving Fermi, Telegdi, Garvin, Chandrasekhar, and others.
One thing that was already briefly mentioned was Bruce’s passionate love for the cinema. He was a world-class expert on the Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni, and, I believe, taught an undergraduate *course* on Antonioni on more than one occasion at the University of Chicago only a few years ago.
Really sad day.
I remember Bruce as a boy when we went to grade school in West L. A. He grew up in a small, older home, near Brentwood Elementary School. He live a few blocks away from me, and I would visit with him to trade coins and talk baseball. He also enjoyed bowling and became rather good at it.
In High School, Bruce was entered into an advanced level of study, along with some of my smarter friends. Bruce had a sense of humor and never minded when his friends would tease him for studying too much. He was capable of doing the same to you. I remember that he sought out Stan Laurel and was granted an interview. His pals were quite impressed. I saw him once or twice when he wast at UCLA and knew he was interested in becoming a physicist. I am glad that he was successful at it. I wondered if he was going to go to our 50th High School reunion this summer. He was the one of the people that I, and another friend, Glenn Lyons, wanted to see.