Robert Gomer, a chemical physicist, taught at the University of Chicago for nearly 50 years while studying the behavior of atoms and molecules on the surfaces of metals.
“He was a distinguished and pioneering scientist in the area of surface physics and chemistry,” said Steven Sibener, a colleague in the University of Chicago Department of Chemistry.
Gomer was also an outspoken opponent of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the mid-1960s, he joined three other scientists in writing a classified report concluding that the U.S. should not use nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War, a use Gomer said at the time would be “an immoral folly,” according to the university.
Gomer, 92, died of complications of Parkinson’s disease at his Hyde Park home Dec. 12, according to his son, Richard.
He was born in Vienna in 1924, the only child of a dermatologist. By 1938, anti-Semitic regulations in Austria forbade Jewish doctors like his father from practicing, and the decision was made to leave Austria for England. Gomer stayed with English families, first in London and later in Scotland, while his parents went to the United States.
In 1940, Gomer came to the U.S. and lived in New York while he finished high school before going to Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. There he got a bachelor’s degree in an accelerated program that got him out of school in time to join the Army during World War II. His son said he served stateside as a radio repairman.
After getting out of the Army, he enrolled in a program at the University of Rochester in New York, getting his doctorate in chemistry in 1949.
His interest in chemistry, his son said, was spurred by two experiences.
His mother’s brother was a chemist who developed a simple test to detect the presence of some metals in rocks as well as the presence of lead in fish. The uncle and his wife were sent to a concentration camp but were released at the request of the Brazilian government so he could be sent there and his tests could be used to protect native people from eating contaminated fish.
The other spur for his interest was a chemistry class he sat in on in Vienna that featured regular explosions.
In 1950, he came to the University of Chicago as an instructor in the chemistry department and the James Franck Institute. Gomer wrote once of the university’s attractions.
“Chicago offered a sense of belonging and a sense of being a part, however modestly, of a great adventure,” wrote Gomer, who taught up to his retirement in 1996.
He served as director of the James Franck Institute from 1977 to 1983. The institute’s website describes it as the premier institute in the U.S. for interdisciplinary research at the intersection of physics, chemistry and materials science.
He was named the Carl W. Eisendrath Distinguished Service Professor in 1984.
“His work on mobility of atoms, surface diffusion, is his most famous work, and it’s been very fundamental for studies of chemical reactions,” Sibener said.
Sibener said while Gomer didn’t work in the chemical or automotive industries, his work had applications in understanding the chemical reactions that underpin such familiar devices as the catalytic converters used to clean up the exhaust of nonelectric cars.
Gomer was also a strong opponent of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He was a regular contributor to and chaired the editorial board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a journal founded by Manhattan Project physicists that covers policy issues related to the dangers of nuclear weapons.
In 1966, Gomer was one of four scientists who wrote a classified report for the Department of Defense about the potential use of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. “Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia” concluded that such strikes would be catastrophic for U.S. global interests.
“He was advising against the use of nuclear weapons, hopefully one of the things that convinced the U.S. military not to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam,” his son said.
He called his father’s work on metal surfaces at the interface of chemistry and physics his other lasting achievement.
Gomer wrote “Field Emission and Field Ionization (1961)” and edited several scientific journals, including Applied Physics. He also won several awards, including the Bourke Lecturer from the Faraday Society, the Kendall Award in Colloid or Surface Science from the American Chemical Society, the Senior U.S. Scientist Award from the A. von Humboldt Society, and the Davisson-Germer Prize in Surface Physics from the American Physical Society, according to the university.
Gomer also is survived by his wife, Anne; his daughter, Maria Luczkow; and three grandchildren.
Plans are being made for a memorial.
Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter.
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