Professor Emeritus Henry Linschitz
Nov. 25, 2014
Dear Colleagues,
I write to share the sad news of the death of Professor Emeritus of Chemistry Henry Linschitz. Henry was a member of the Brandeis faculty for 32 years until his retirement in 1989. His wife, Suzanne Hodes, is also part of the Brandeis community, as an alumna and as an artist who has work is in the permanent collection of the Rose Art Museum and who has also exhibited at the Kniznick Gallery of the Women's Studies Research Center.
Henry Linschitz was educated in the New York City schools and at City College of New York, where he earned his B.S. in chemistry in 1940. He then began graduate studies in physical chemistry at Duke University, but left to join the war effort, first at the Explosives Research Laboratory and then as a section leader at Los Alamos, as part of the Manhattan Project. After the war, he completed his doctorate at Duke, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago. He taught at Syracuse University for a decade before joining the Brandeis faculty in 1957.
A distinguished research scientist, Henry was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He was an expert in photophysical and photochemical processes in solution, using flash photolysis methods to study energy and electron transfer reactions. In the classroom, he taught physical chemistry and general chemistry to countless Brandeis undergraduates and graduate students. Henry was particularly proud of a thank-you note he received from one of his former students, Rod MacKinnon, shortly after Rod won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
As a scientist who helped to create the first atomic bomb, Henry Linschitz was acutely aware of the moral issues raised by such work. In the 1980's, he helped to found United Campuses Against Nuclear War. He also served on the board of the Center for Campus Organizing. Teacher, scholar, activist: Henry Linschitz was the quintessential Brandeis faculty member.
The funeral will be this coming Sunday at 11 A.M. at the Levine Chapels (470 Harvard Street/Brookline), with burial following at Adath Jeshurun Cemetery (350 Groves Street/Roxbury). There will be shiva visiting hours, at 35 Riverside Drive in Waltham, on Sunday from 4 to 6 P.M. and again on Tuesday (December 2) from 4 to 6 P.M. I know you join with me in sending our sympathies to Henry's wife and family.
Sincerely,
Lisa Lynch
Lisa M. Lynch, Ph.D.
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and
Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy
Brandeis University
assistant: Kristen Stevens, kstevens@brandeis.edu
phone: 781-736-2101