This has been percolating around the community the last few days, but some sad news just came in via the ATLAS Secretariat:
Dear Colleagues,
We are saddened by the passing of Prof. Michael P. Schmidt, 53 years old, from Yale University who worked on the ATLAS TRT since 2003. He brought the Yale group into ATLAS with Colin Gay who is now at U British Columbia. The Yale group took on successfully a very critical item with the design, layout and prototyping of the TRT Read Out Drivers. Michael authored and co-authored numerous papers in physics and his advice was sought for many critical national committees. He was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was honoured by his colleagues at a reception at Yale on Oct. 18, 2007. He is survived by his children Daniel and Julia, and by his parents.
We send our sympathy to all his family and friends.
Michael Tuts and Howard Gordon, U.S. ATLAS
Michael Zeller, Yale University
Fido Dittus, ATLAS TRT Project Leader
Peter Jenni, ATLAS Collaboration Spokesperson
A memorial page can be found online.
I took Michael Schmidt’s first-year course as a somewhat-unprepared Yale sophomore. Of course, the first few months were pretty tough for me, as I had not yet gotten used to the physicist’s way of seeing the world. Luckily for me, he was always straightforward and clear — and generous with his time to go over exams etc. But most important, he conveyed to me a real sense of the physicist’s lifestyle, e.g. when he explained why he was missing various lectures, to jet off to conferences or labs — which I found very exciting. Thus, my interaction with him was a non-trivial part of my eventual decision to become a physicist. So while I never interacted with him much after that, his too-early passing has a particular poignancy for me.
