Service set for Jeffrey
Willick, assistant professor of physics
BY DAWN LEVY
A memorial service will be
held Sunday, July 9, for Jeffrey Alan Willick, 40, an
assistant professor of physics, who was fatally struck by
a sports car that crashed through a glass window at a
Starbucks coffee shop in Englewood, N.J., on June 18.
Willick had been visiting
his father, psychiatrist and Columbia University lecturer
Martin Willick of Teaneck, N.J., for Father's Day. In
keeping with his custom of catching up on work while
traveling, Willick had been seated alone at a table for
four near the window, working on his laptop computer,
reading and sipping coffee when the accident occurred.
Joseph A. Santiglia, 53,
of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., traveled eastbound on Route 4
before losing control of his red 2000 Mustang GT in the
Starbucks parking lot and crashing into the coffee shop,
according to John Higgins, assistant prosecutor for the
Bergen County Prosecutor's Office in New Jersey.
Rescue workers removed
Santiglia, uninjured, from his car. Willick was pinned
against the car's grille. The Englewood Ambulance Squad
took him to Hackensack University Medical Center, where
he was pronounced dead.
Englewood police issued
Santiglia a summons accusing him of driving while
intoxicated, Higgins says. Santiglia had exhibited
slurred speech and unsteadiness on his feet, although
police did not detect the odor of alcohol, Higgins says.
Authorities also cannot rule out mechanical failure at
this time. A blood test is pending to determine if
alcohol or drugs played a role. Results are expected in
two to three weeks. In the meantime, a criminal
investigation is under way.
"Jeff was a caring
and conscientious classroom teacher," says Steve
Chu, chairman of the Department of Physics. "He was
particularly committed to involving undergraduates in
research and had sponsored a half dozen undergraduates in
either independent research or honors thesis projects. He
was also well respected and liked by his graduate
students. His research, the measurement of 'peculiar'
(local) velocities of distant galaxies as a tool for
probing important questions in cosmology, was adding
substantial contributions to the field due to his careful
analysis."
"Jeff was an active
and enthusiastic member of the Stanford astrophysics
group," says Roger Romani, associate professor of
physics. "His work, characterized by uncompromising
attention to detail, was receiving wide attention in the
cosmology community. He was very excited about the
ongoing revolution in cosmology and the contributions
that his group was making. Even more fundamental results
were expected as he worked with the Hobby-Eberly
telescope and other modern instruments. To his students,
he was a dynamic and compassionate mentor. To his
colleagues, he was a source of clear and original
thinking on fundamental problems. This is a great loss to
astrophysics in general and the Stanford community in
particular."
Born on Oct. 8, 1959,
Willick received bachelor's degrees in chemistry and
physics from Harvard, where he was elected into Phi Beta
Kappa in his junior year and graduated magna cum laude in
1981. He received a master's degree in 1983 in physics
from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1983 to
1984, he taught physics at Dwight Englewood High School
in Englewood, N.J. He returned to the University of
California, Berkeley, for his doctoral work in physics,
supporting himself as a teaching assistant in physics and
as a research assistant in astrophysics. He received his
doctorate in 1991.
Also that year, Willick
won a Fullam/Dudley Award in astronomy. He was offered a
Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship in 1991, but he declined
it to take a postdoctoral fellowship in astronomy at the
Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, where he performed
research from 1991 to 1995.
Since 1995, Willick had
been an assistant professor of physics at Stanford, where
he produced 21 scientific articles.
In 1998, he was awarded
both a Cottrell Scholarship from the Research Corporation
and a Terman Fellowship from Stanford in support of his
research in observational cosmology.
As a member of the Physics
Department faculty, Willick taught a variety of
undergraduate and graduate courses, including the popular
class, "The Nature of the Universe."
His primary research
interests were cosmology and the formation of structure
in the universe. He focused on big questions: Is the
universe flat? Is there a nonzero cosmological constant?
Did structure in the contemporary universe emerge from
the very nearly uniform primordial distribution of matter
solely via the process of gravitational instability? What
is the nature of dark matter, believed to constitute 90
percent of the total mass of the universe?
"I pursue these
questions by observing the distribution and peculiar
velocities of galaxies," he wrote on his website.
"The methodology is primarily observational; I
maintain and analyze data from large optical and infrared
ground-based telescopes."
Willick, who was a
resident of Stanford, is survived by his wife, Ellen, and
young children Jason and Emily and other family members
and friends.
"This is not only a
professional loss because of Jeff's excellence in
cosmology, but a personal loss based on the community and
given the children," says physics Professor Blas
Cabrera, who lives a block away from the Willicks.
"It is going to take us a while to make some rhyme
or reason of this."
Associate Professor
Patricia Burchat was a colleague and friend of Jeff
Willick. They were both hired at Stanford around the same
time and shared a strong interest in teaching and in the
"big questions" in physics. "I will really
miss the opportunity to discuss these issues," she
says.
Burchat and her husband,
Tony Norcia, and their two young children also live next
door to the Willicks. "In this close-knit community,
the loss of Jeff and the impact on his family is very
deeply felt," Burchat says. "The neighborhood
has been drawn even closer together as we try to plan how
to best offer our support to Ellen and the children now
and over the longer term."
A memorial service was
held June 21 in New Jersey. The July 9 service for the
Stanford community will take place at noon at
Congregation Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos
Hills. Donations to the family can be made to the Jeffrey
Willick Memorial Fund, c/o Stanford Federal Credit Union,
P.O. Box 10690, Palo Alto, CA 94303. SR
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