Michael Tinkham
Michael Tinkham, Rumford Professor of Physics and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics in the Physics Department and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Emeritus, who was internationally known for his contributions to condensed matter physics, in particular superconductivity, died in Portland, Oregon, on November 4, 2010, of complications following a stroke. He was 82 years old. Mike was an experimental physicist with a gift for theory and a nose for important challenging problems. After graduating from Ripon College in Wisconsin in 1951 with a bachelor’s degree in physics, he proceeded to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his master’s degree and Ph.D. in just three years. His thesis, “Theory of the Fine Structure of the Molecular Oxygen Ground State with an Experimental Study of its Microwave Paramagnetic Spectrum,” was published in 1955. He changed his interests from gaseous magnetic oxygen to the understanding of properties in solids...