Guy T. Emery (1931–2023)

Late in the day on Friday, we learned the sad news that Guy T. Emery, professor of physics emeritus and a member of the Bowdoin Class of 1953, passed away peacefully on Thursday, September 14, in Hanover, New Hampshire, at the age of ninety-two.

Born on May 22, 1931, in Colebrook, New Hampshire, Guy grew up in South Paris and New Gloucester, Maine. He was the valedictorian of his class at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine, and arrived at Bowdoin in the fall of 1949. A member of Theta Delta Chi Fraternity, he served as senior class marshal and spoke for the undergraduates at the inauguration of James S. Coles, Bowdoin’s ninth president. He was also designated a distinguished military student in Bowdoin’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program.

Guy earned a master’s degree in experimental nuclear physics at Harvard in 1954, married Marilyn Judkins in 1955 while he was a teaching fellow at Harvard, and went on to earn his doctorate in 1959—also at Harvard and also in experimental nuclear physics.

Guy entered active duty in the US Army in the fall of 1958 and was assigned to the Army Engineer Research and Development Laboratories at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where he performed research on the detection of buried mines. In February 1959, at the urging of professor and chair of the physics department Noel Little, Guy was invited by President Coles to join the Bowdoin faculty.

“I am very pleased that my name would come up in connection with a post at Bowdoin,” Guy wrote in his reply. “The idea attracts me greatly.” But Bowdoin would have to wait nearly thirty years to get him. When his military tour ended in March 1959, Guy began a postdoctoral research associateship at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, where he would work as a physicist until 1966.

After a year as a visiting associate professor of physics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he joined the physics faculty at Indiana University, where he was the co-investigator at the University’s Cyclotron Facility and was promoted to professor in 1969. His research interests led to two appointments as a guest scientist at Rijksuniversiteit in Groningen in the Netherlands and a term as a visiting scholar at Osaka University in Japan.

He was hired as a professor of physics at Bowdoin in 1988 and served as department chair from 1988 to 1994. In 1989, Guy was named chair of a new Committee on Environmental Impact that was charged with reviewing proposals for campus construction and for changes in college policies that have an effect on the environment. A year later, in the face of significant financial difficulties at the College, President Robert H. Edwards named Guy and twelve other members of the faculty or staff to a new strategic planning task force charged with “doing what is necessary to identify the priorities of the institution [and] propose measures to rebalance programs and strategies to generate income and contain expenditures so as to reflect those priorities.”

As a teacher, Guy was known by students for his unique phrases. One student jotted them down, and for years, a two-page sheet of “Emery-isms” titled “Eloquent Thoughts” would make the rounds in Searles Hall.

Guy retired in 1998 and was elected professor of physics emeritus by the Bowdoin board of trustees. He remained active in retirement, assisting with lab set-ups for the physics department, attending conferences, and pursuing his research on the history of physics.

Guy’s commitment to education and service to the profession were evident through his involvement in committee work for the American Institute of Physics, The National Research Council, the American Physical Society, and the American Association of Physics Teachers. He also served on the board of directors of the New England Consortium for Undergraduate Science Education.

Guy was predeceased in 2003 by Marilyn, his wife of forty-eight years. He is survived by daughter Karen (Bowdoin ’78) and her husband, Tom Young, of Wardsboro, Vt.; Kim Emery and her wife, Kathryn Baker, of Gainesville, Fla.; his grandchildren, Meredith and her husband, Eric, Amanda and her husband, Aziz, Jeffrey, and Vanessa; and four great-grandchildren, Natalie, Colette, Owen, and Lucas. He is also survived by a niece, Ptarmigan Emery; nephews Trask Emery and Timothy Emery, all of Colorado; and nieces Joan Bickford and Susan Longfellow, both of Wiscasset, Maine.

Guy is remembered by his family as a man of many interests, from Shakespeare to Red Sox games, and from playing the piano to completing The New York Times crossword puzzle in pen.

A distinguished scientist, scholar, and teacher, Guy was clearly an esteemed mentor and colleague during his time on the Bowdoin faculty and well into his retirement. I am sorry I did not have the opportunity to meet him. We extend our condolences to Guy’s family and friends with deep gratitude for the life he shared generously with so many.

Sincerely,