Rice mourns loss of nuclear physicist Gordon Mutchler

Rice mourns loss of nuclear physicist Gordon Mutchler

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

The Rice community is mourning the loss of Gordon Mutchler, professor of physics and astronomy, who died Aug. 15 from a heart attack at age 70.

“Gordon was an excellent scientist, a wonderful colleague and true gentleman,” said Barry Dunning, chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “He will be missed by us all.”

	GORDON MUTCHLER

Mutchler’s career at Rice spanned 40 years. His wife of 45 years, Lynne, said her husband could have retired several years ago but chose not to because he was fascinated by the day-to-day work of researching and teaching physics.

“The thing he was most proud of was always his latest work, whatever he had just finished,” she said.

Mutchler earned his bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and attended graduate school at MIT on a National Science Foundation fellowship. After a two-year postdoctoral appointment at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mutchler joined Rice’s T.W. Bonner Nuclear Laboratory in 1968.

Mutchler studied the “strong” force, which binds the protons and neutrons inside the nucleus of all atoms and also binds the quarks and gluons inside protons and neutrons. As an experimentalist, he specialized in studying how nuclei behave at intermediate energies.

In recent years, Mutchler concentrated on experiments with collaborators at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va.

Bonner Lab colleague Jabus Roberts, who knew and worked with Mutchler for 34 years, said Mutchler was well-liked by everyone and especially by students, in part because of his self-deprecating sense of humor.

“He understood that we are all human beings and that we all make mistakes,” said Roberts. “He knew that you have to work hard and try hard but that you cannot take yourself too seriously.”

Roberts, professor of physics and astronomy, said Mutchler took over the department’s physics course for premed undergraduates several years ago and vastly improved the course, bringing in guest lecturers and instituting a tradition of group homework sessions on Friday afternoons.

“The students work together in a room, and periodically they would go down to Gordon’s office to ask him questions,” Roberts said, noting that the tradition will be continued this fall.

Lynne Mutchler said her husband’s love of teaching stemmed from his love of physics and his desire to impart some of the beauty that he found in nature’s inner workings. She said his enthusiasm and personality fostered a special connection with students.

“On Valentine’s Day, the students wrote a love letter to me and signed his name to it,” she said. “They’d used formulas and the language of physics in composing it, and they wrote it on the blackboard. Gordon printed out some photos of it and brought them home to me. He thought it was wonderful.”

Mutchler is survived by a son, Andrew Mutchler ’94, of Houston, and a sister, Marjorie Mutchler, of St. Louis.

A reception honoring Mutchler’s many contributions to Rice and the Department of Physics and Astronomy will be held Sept. 12 at Farnsworth Pavilion in Rice Memorial Center from 4:30 to 6 p.m.