Obituaries

Barbara Hope Cooper, the first woman to be appointed a professor of physics at Cornell, died Aug. 7 at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca. She was 45. She had been undergoing treatment for lung cancer for several months, but was still actively involved with her research group of seven graduate students until the week of her death.

Born Sept. 1, 1953, in Lancaster, Pa., Cooper came to Cornell for undergraduate work in 1971, intending to prepare for medical school. Her studies were interrupted during her sophomore year by a serious back injury from a diving accident. Unable to take classes for a semester, she obtained an undergraduate research position at Cornell's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies, and became interested in physics. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics here in 1976 and did graduate study at the California Institute of Technology, obtaining her Ph.D. in 1982. She remained at Caltech as a postdoctoral fellow until she was recruited by the Cornell Physics Department in 1983 as an assistant professor.

Cooper is best known for her innovative experimental studies of low-energy ion interactions with metal surfaces. She began as a novice in this research field, with an empty lab and little money, but within a few years she had created one of the leading laboratories in her field. Working with her students and collaborators, she developed experimental and analytical tools necessary to obtain detailed information about scattering and electron transfer processes at surfaces. More recently, she extended her research program to investigate low-energy ion erosion and growth of metals using high-resolution microscopy and x-ray diffraction. She was a superb supervisor and successfully guided a dozen students through their Ph.D.s at Cornell. Throughout her career, she realized the technological opportunities for her research; however, closest to her heart was a deep devotion to fundamental science.

Her talents were widely recognized in the national and international physics communities. She received a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (1985-89) and faculty development awards from IBM and AT&T. In 1992, she was awarded the American Physical Society's Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award.

Cooper's importance to Cornell went far beyond her own research group. In recent years her scientific leadership was increasingly vital to both the multidisciplinary Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR) and the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS). She had an unusual talent for organizing large, diverse groups of scientists and engineers into effective collaborations. She was a key leader in Cornell's successful bid for federal funding to build the new G-Line extension to CHESS, which will provide a unique, dedicated X-ray facility to Cornell researchers. She also was serving on the executive committee of the CCMR and the general committee of the Graduate School.

In recent years, Cooper took a special interest in outreach programs to bring exposure to science to students in grade school and her 8-year-old daughter Katie.

Cooper is survived by her husband, Christopher Robert Myers, a senior research associate in Cornell's Theory Center; her daughter Katherine Hope Myers Cooper; her parents, Charles Burleigh Cooper and Hope Ferguson Cooper, now of Ithaca; her sister Jane Douglas Cooper of Cheshire, Conn.; and her brother Charles Burleigh Cooper III of Redwood City, Calif.

A memorial gathering will be held in September, at a time and place to be announced. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Cancer Society or to the Barbara Hope Cooper Memorial Fund, c/o the Department of Physics, Clark Hall, Cornell University.

Harriet Wilkes Cornell, a philanthropist and ardent supporter of Cornell, died Aug. 2 at the age of 85 in her home in Delray Beach, Fla. In 1998 she and her husband, George, gave $10 million for student scholarships at Cornell. It was the single largest gift in the university's $200 million scholarship endowment campaign, which will end this October.

"George and Harriet have opened wide the doors of opportunity for generations of talented Cornell students," said President Hunter Rawlings when he announced the gift to university trustees and council members in October 1998. "We are deeply grateful and applaud their farsighted philanthropy."

In 1995 Harriet and George Cornell made a $2 million donation toward the renovation of Bailey Hall. In addition to better acoustics and new seats, improvements will include making the concert and lecture hall accessible to the handicapped. When the work is completed, the auditorium will be renamed in their honor.

Harriet Cornell grew up in Central Valley, N.Y., and first saw Bailey Hall as a young girl when she was recuperating from polio in Ithaca's Reconstruction Home. One of her strongest memories was being carried into the auditorium along with other polio patients when she was 14 for a showing of one of the first feature-length films with sound, "The Jazz Singer," starring Al Jolson.

Harriet Cornell and her husband also endowed the Edward Cornell Librarianship at the Cornell Law School library, naming it for George's father, a graduate of the Law School's first class in 1899 and the university's first law librarian. In addition they joined with George's sisters, Phoebe Maresi and Katherine Stainton, to endow a professorship at the Law School in honor of Edward Cornell.

Harriet and George Cornell were inspired to support the Derek Bryceson Scholarship in Human Ecology after meeting wildlife researcher Jane Goodall, the wife of the late Derek Bryceson, in Palm Beach, Fla., in 1986.

In September 1996, Harriet Cornell and her husband were honored for their ongoing generosity to the university when they were named foremost benefactors and their names were engraved in the wall adjacent to Uris Library. Foremost benefactors, or "builders" of Cornell, have made significant cumulative gifts to the university.

But despite her last name and her long history as a philanthropist, Harriet Cornell had only a circuitous connection to the university's founder. Her husband and Ezra Cornell were both descended from Thomas Cornell, who emigrated from England to the American colonies in 1638.

Harriet Cornell's philanthropy extended to her Florida community, where she and her husband made a gift to construct a cageless rain forest at the Palm Beach Zoo at Dreher Park. The Cornells also were generous supporters of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens and the Old School Square, a historic site in Delray beach, as well as benefactors of Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla.

Leo Vladimir Berger '42, JD '56, who rose from poverty to own a premiere merchant shipping fleet, died July 24. He had been a Cornell Presidential Councillor since 1990, the highest honor given to Cornell alumnae. He also served on the University Council between 1983 and 1987 and was a member of the Cornell Law School Advisory Council.

Berger was born in Hungary in 1920 and came to the United States with his parents, brothers and sisters about eight years later. Because his parents could not provide financially for their children, Berger and his siblings grew up as wards of the New York City Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

In his teens, Berger had been admitted to an agricultural college in Texas, but because he was too young, he was not permitted to leave New York state without supervision. Thus, he enrolled at Cornell.

Berger graduated from Cornell in 1942 with a bachelor's degree from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Afterward, he earned a commission from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, N.Y., and he served as captain of a merchant ship during the Korean War.

Returning to Cornell, Berger married Arvilla Sheheen, who worked at Cornell, and he earned a law degree in 1956. Soon after, he joined an international shipping company as operations manager. Noting the United States' dying merchant marine fleet, Berger started Apex Marine Corp., Lake Success, N.Y., to compete with foreign rivals. Apex Marine boasted 24 ships and $100 million annual revenues in its heyday during the mid-1980s.

With wealth from the shipping business, philanthropy was not lost on Berger and he was named as a foremost benefactor at Cornell. Highlights of some his gifts include the endowment of the Berger International Legal Studies Program in 1991, an endowment for a food science graduate student to honor his long-time friend, the late food science professor Frank Kosikowski. The atrium in Myron Taylor Hall is named for Berger and his wife, Arvilla.