The following obituary was published in Physics Today in June 1998.
 
 
 

        Max Dresden, the noted physicist, historian and sociologist of science, teacher and lecturer, died in Stanford, California, on 29 October 1997 at the age of 79.

        Born in Amsterdam, Max received his early education in physics in The Netherlands. Just before the start of the World War II, he moved to the US and, in 1946, obtained his Ph.D in physics from the University of Michigan, where he pursued research in statistical mechanics.

        After graduating, Max joined the physics faculty of the University of Kansas. From 1957 to 1960, he chaired the Northwestern University's physics department. He then went to the University of Iowa, from which he moved to the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1964.

        For 25 years, Max was a professor of physics at Stony Brook, where he also served as executive office of the university's Institute for Theoretical Physics. Very active in the affairs of the university and respected by students and faculty members alike, he was an extraordinarily effective voice for reason during the years of unrest on the nation's college campuses in the 1960s and 1970s. When he retired from Stony Brook in 1987, he moved to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where continued his research, teaching and lecturing.

        Max's productive career in theoretical physics began with his first paper on the condensation of gases, which was published in 1944. He later contributed to statistical mechanics, superconductivity, quantum field theory and elementary particle physics. His strengths lay in his ability to read, appreciate and absorb a broad spectrum of ideas and to organise them into lectures and expository writings. In later years, he returned to the field of statistical mechanics and developed, with his colleage Amador Muriel, a novel theory of turbulent flow in liquids. Their most recent paper was published in Marcch 1997. Thus, Max, always an active scientist, was still doing physics research in the last months of his life.

        In addition to theoretical physics, Max was deeply interested in the history and sociology of modern science, particularly physics. He was aided in this pursuit by his wide range of friends and aquaintances in science, his ability to read, speak and write several European languages and by his love of travel. He was thus able in the 1940s and 1950s to get to know and to talk to many of the great physicists of the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed with his death, on of the last active links to the science world of the interwar years was lost. His 1987 book H. A. Kramers: Between Tradition and Revolution (Springer-Verlag) is representative of the depth of his knowledge and insight.

        A gifted teacher, Max, through his carefully structured lectures, took his audience from the basic ideas to the current status of the subject, as though on a voyage of discovery. He was particularly fond of being a thesis advisor to more than 60 Ph.D students.

        Whether addressing students, professional physicists or the general public, Max brought profound scientific understanding and enthusiasm to the teaching of physics. He was courtly yet friendly, and like to illustrate his lectureswith anecdotes, humour and philosophy drawn from his extensive knowledge of history, literature and the arts. His warm, kind and energetic personality was tremendously appreciated by students, colleagues and friends. As a result, his presence and his lectures were in great demand, and he served as a visiting professor and a visiting scientist in many institutions.

        In addition to his book on Kramers, Max participated in the editing or writing of many other books. They include Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s, edited with Laurie Brown and Lillian Hoddeson (Cambridge University Press, 1989), The History of Non-Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics in Twentieth Century Physics, edited by Brown, Abraham Pais and Brian Pippard (IOP Publishing and AIP Press, 1995) and a chapter ``On Personal Styles and Tastes in Physics,'' in a volume dedicated to Chen Ning Yang. He was also the coeditor of The Rise of the Standard Model (Cambridge University Press, 1997), which has just appeared---but, alas, too late for him to have seen the final product.

Peter B. Kahn
Chen Ning Yang
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, New York

Martin L. Perl
Helen R. Quinn
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Stanford, California.

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