
J. Robert Schrieffer (1931–2019) - headalgorithm
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03015-3
======
chmaynard
From the obit in The New York Times:

Late in life, Dr. Schrieffer’s love of fast cars ended in tragedy. In
September 2004, he was driving from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, Calif.,
when his car, traveling at more than 100 miles per hour, slammed into a van,
killing a man and injuring seven other people.

Dr. Schrieffer, whose Florida driver’s license was suspended, pleaded no
contest to felony vehicular manslaughter and apologized to the victims and
their families. He was sentenced to two years in prison and released after
serving one year.

Florida State placed Dr. Schrieffer on leave after the incident, and he
retired in 2006.

Richard Klemm, a professor of physics at the University of Central Florida,
who collaborated with Dr. Schrieffer on a research problem in the 1980s, said
he had tried to contact him but did not hear back.

“He wouldn’t communicate with anyone,” he said. “He apparently didn’t want to
have anything to do with his community any more after what happened.”

------
FiatLuxDave
I remember going to an interesting lecture by Dr. Schrieffer back in (1997?)
where he talked about effectively fractional quantum numbers in the electron
wavefunctions in long chained molecules like DNA. I don't think much came of
it, but it was an interesting idea.

Here is a review by Frank Wilczek:
[http://www.frankwilczek.com/Wilczek_Easy_Pieces/330_Fraction...](http://www.frankwilczek.com/Wilczek_Easy_Pieces/330_Fractional_Quantum_Numbers.pdf)

------
mlevental
pretty unbelievable they don't mention this
[https://www.foxnews.com/story/nobel-prize-winning-
physicist-...](https://www.foxnews.com/story/nobel-prize-winning-physicist-
gets-two-years-in-prison-for-deadly-crash)

~~~
chmaynard
In fairness, the obit in Nature is strictly about his career and discoveries.
Let's see what the NYT obit looks like. However, thanks for pointing this out.
I save obits of notable people, and in this case I concatenated both articles.

