RIP Mary Gaillard (1939-2025)

[robphy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_K._Gaillard

Mary Katharine Gaillard (née Ralph; April 1, 1939 – May 23, 2025) was an American theoretical physicist, known for her work in particle physics. She was a professor of the graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, and visiting scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She was Berkeley's first tenured female physicist.

Gaillard's influential contributions included the prediction of the mass of the charm quark prior to its discovery (with Benjamin W. Lee);
the prediction of 3-jet events (with John Ellis and Graham Ross);
and the prediction of b-quark mass (with M.S. Chanowitz and Ellis).
Gaillard's autobiography is A Singularly Unfeminine Profession, published in 2015 by World Scientific.

https://cerncourier.com/mary-k-gaillard-1939-2025/

https://physics.berkeley.edu/news/r...cal-physicist-esteemed-educator-inspirational
https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/07/0...cal-physicist-mary-k-gaillard-has-died-at-86/

Mary K. Gaillard, a UC Berkeley professor emerita of physics, circa 1982.

Mary K. Gaillard discussing the physics of kaons with Murray Gell-man in 1972 at CERN in Geneva. Gell-mann shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his proposal that the elementary particles held together by the strong force are composed of smaller building blocks called quarks

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https://artsci.case.edu/smat50/mary-k-gaillard/ [SM@50: The Standard Model At 50 Years]

(2018) Charm, Beauty: Mary K. Gaillard [part of The Standard Model at 50]


"Search for charm"
Mary K. Gaillard*, Benjamin W. Lee, and Jonathan L. Rosner
Rev. Mod. Phys. 47, 277 – Published 1 April, 1975
https://journals.aps.org/rmp/abstract/10.1103/RevModPhys.47.277

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AIP Physics History Network: Mary K. Gaillard
https://history.aip.org/phn/11510009.html

https://academictree.org/physics/tree.php?pid=261060
https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=186024

https://inspirehep.net/authors/1009077

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"Adventures with Particles"
Mary K. Gaillard
Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science Volume 71, 2021
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-nucl-111119-053716 (PDF is nicer to read)



(2015) Mary Gaillard, Berkeley's Feminist Physicist [UC Berkeley]


(2016) One woman’s journey in physics: Mary K Gaillard [CERN]

• https://berkeleysciencereview.com/a...ce-and-charm-an-interview-with-mary-gaillard/
• https://www.theorygirls.com/post/an-interview-with-mary-gaillard
• https://uol.de/en/news/article/the-smaller-encounters-are-the-most-helpful-2837

 

[sbrothy]

Why the double-post? Now I don't know which one to link to from my thread!

 

[sbrothy]

Sorry, I think I'm seeing double...

 

[pines-demon]

I totally missed this passing. She was truly a titan. Thank you for posting.