Robert Vivian Pound
“A great tree has fallen” remarked one of his colleagues upon the death of Robert Vivian Pound, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics, Emeritus, on April 12, 2010, following a series of strokes. One of the historic figures of twentieth-century physics, Pound played a central role in several discoveries that have had immense consequences for science and our everyday lives. He was a man of broad interests, with a humanitarian concern for the beneficial uses of science. Directly from college Pound joined the scientific war effort at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, contributing fundamental ideas and inventions essential to the development of radar, among them the broadband “Pound stub” coaxial support and the microwave cavity-locked “Pound stabilizer.” He wrote the book (literally) on Microwave Mixers. After the war he and his collaborators adapted these techniques (still widely used in radar and communications) to detect nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in condensed matter; it became a...