Horst Meyer, Swiss physicist, Died at 90

Horst Meyer was born on March 1, 1926, and died on August 14, 2016.

He was a Swiss scientist doing research in condensed matter physics.

He was the son of the surgeon Arthur Woldemar Meyer in Berlin and the grandson of the pharmacologist Hans Horst Meyer.

Following Arthur’s sudden death in 1933, he was adopted by the chemist Kurt Heinrich Meyer, the brother of Arthur, and grew up in Switzerland.

Following his graduation from the Collège Jean Calvin in Geneva, Meyer studied physics and physical chemistry at the universities of Geneva and of Zürich, obtaining his PhD in 1953.

Horst Meyer was initially a postdoctoral associate, later a Nuffield Fellow in the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford, from 1957 lecturer at Harvard University.

During 1959, Meyer was appointed an assistant professor at Duke University (where Fritz London was formerly on the faculty), and where he became in 1984 the Fritz London Professor and finally professor emeritus in 2004.

During 1953, Meyer’s married Ruth Mary Hunter (deceased in 2013) and he has one son, Christopher, who is a staff physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

He died due cancer.

Horst Meyer passed away at 70 years old.