Who was Deborah Jin and why is her passing a loss for physics?

[ZapperZ]

It is with great sadness that the woman who I thought would eventually win the Nobel Prize in Physics, Deborah Jin, has passed away this past Sept. 15, after a battle with cancer.

https://jila.colorado.edu/news/deborah-jin-dies-47

This one will truly hurt. She was in the prime of her life and her career. The Nobel Committee missed a tremendous opportunity to award a deserving physicist of her prize.

Zz.

 

[Doc Al]

 

[Dr Transport]

my bet was on her to win this year..., lost that $10. NIST lost two phenomenal female physicists between her and Katherine Gebbie in a month.

 

[OmCheeto]

I'd never heard of her until yesterday, so I watched a one hour lecture where she discussed her research:

Newton Lecture 2014: Professor Deborah Jin


Although the audio for the guy introducing her is terrible, her microphone worked fine. She starts around 6:15 in the video.

Well worth the watch.
I'm not sure I've ever watched a video before, where someone describes the details behind quantum experiments.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

oh I hate cancer! She was so young!

 

[couragerolls]

We truly lost a great physicist!

 

[Dishsoap]

Debbie helped quite a bit with the REU program at CU while I was there. As a female, she is my role model. As a physicist, she is my role model. As a person, she is my role model. As all of the above, well... the world truly lost someone great.

 

[robphy]

She was my classmate in grad school... but I didn't really know her.
In recent years, she was on my radar as someone to invite to give a seminar to our majors. (Thanks @OmCheeto for the link to her talk.)
R.I.P.

 

[Stephanus]

Truly sorry for Deborah Jin, even though I don't know her. May God rest her soul peacefully.

 

[Redbelly98]

I saw her give a talk at a conference around 1997. If I recall correctly, she had recently transitioned from post doc to permanent staff at NIST, and it was pretty clear she was a rising star in physics.

What I remember from her talk was her proposal to use lithium for laser cooling & trapping experiments. Since it has both bosonic and fermionic isotopes in abundance, she would be able to study both types of particle using the same experimental setup.

What a loss.

 

[OmCheeto]

my bet was on her to win this year..., lost that $10. NIST lost two phenomenal female physicists between her and Katherine[-1 sp] Gebbie in a month.

Thank you for pointing out Katharine. I'd never heard of her either. So I watched a video about her, also.

Katharine Blodgett Gebbie: A Tribute

This video tribute to legendary NIST laboratory director Katharine Blodgett Gebbie was produced in late 2015 when the most advanced laboratory building at the NIST campus in Boulder, Colo., the Katharine Blodgett Gebbie Laboratory, was named in her honor.​

When I saw that Deborah Jin described her as "brilliant", I kind of decided I should research her further.

Her interview made me very sad, that I never got to meet her. She and I have a lot in common*.

Katharine Blodgett Gebbie: In Her Own Words

Published on Aug 18, 2016
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Katharine Blodgett Gebbie, former director of NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory, talks about her life and her career in science.​

*Ok. about the only thing she and I have in common, is, after two shots of scotch, we do things, that make us pull the covers over our heads when in bed, thinking; "What have I done!"

 

[Astronuc]

RIP Deborah Jin and Katharine Blodgett Gebbie. What a great loss. Both seem to be excellent scientists and managers.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/ne...st-and-jila-physicist-deborah-jin-passes-away

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/ne...-visionary-and-mentor-nobel-laureates-dies-84

 

[td21]

RIP

 

[rude man]

It is with great sadness that the woman who I thought would eventually win the Nobel Prize in Physics, Deborah Jin, has passed away this past Sept. 15, after a battle with cancer.

https://jila.colorado.edu/news/deborah-jin-dies-47

This one will truly hurt. She was in the prime of her life and her career. The Nobel Committee missed a tremendous opportunity to award a deserving physicist of her prize.

Zz.

Thank you for the post Zz. A very sad occurrence, a loss to all of us.

rude man aka rudy dankwort

 

[vanhees71]

Here you can find the obituary in Nature:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v538/n7625/full/538318a.html?cookies=accepted