Bruce Cork
Bruce Cork, a former high-energy physicist in LBL's Accelerator and Fusion Research Division, died on October 7 after a lengthy illness. He was 78.
Cork came to LBL as a graduate student and research assistant in 1946, joining the group working with Luis Alvarez on the linear accelerator project. He had previously worked with Alvarez on secret radar research at MIT.
A native of Peck, Mich., Cork had attended the University of Michigan, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Columbia University, and MIT before his education was interrupted by the war. He completed the work towards his doctorate at UC Berkeley, and received a Ph.D. in physics in 1960. He became a member of Fred Lofgren's physics group, and participated in the group's experiments on scattering of strongly interacting particles, discovery of production of antineutrons, and measurement of nonconservation of parity in the decay of strange particles. He spent a year at CERN, Geneva.
In 1968 Cork and colleagues, working at a high-altitude laboratory on Mount Evans, Col., completed a search for quarks in cosmic rays. No quarks were found, but a new upper limit of the cross section was determined.
From 1968 to 1973, Cork was associate laboratory directory for high energy physics at Argonne National Laboratory. In September 1973, he returned to LBL, where he resumed his research with the Lofgren physics group. He initiated an LBL collaboration with the PEP-12 experiment at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where Argonne Laboratory's large diameter superconducting magnet was transported cross country to become the foundation for the collaboration's High Resolution Spectrometer.
Cork retired from LBL in 1986. He is survived by his wife, Sue, four children, and 11 grandchildren. Memorial gifts may be made to Hospice of Northern California, Parkinson Foundation East Bay Chapter of A.P.D.A., or the Nature Conservancy.