Willy Haeberli
What do you remember about Willy? Share your stories and photos here, and invite others to come share their memories.
Willy Haeberli, World- renowned Nuclear Physicist, Dies
October 4, 2021
Professor Emeritus Willy Haeberli, one of the world's preeminent nuclear physicists, died at his home in Madison, Wisconsin on October 4th, 2021. He was 96.
A professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Willy Haeberli pioneered studies of the interactions of beams of polarized particles with targets to better understand the detailed nuclear structure of matter. He was instrumental in the early development and advancement of polarized ion-sources used in such experiments. He and his team developed, installed, and troubleshot polarized ion sources all around the world.
Born in 1925 in Zurich, Switzerland, to Paul and Clara Haeberli, Professor Haeberli grew up in Basel, and was educated at the University of Basel. Willy served in the Swiss Army as a radio operator but refused offers of advancement as an officer.
He moved to the USA in 1952, after accepting a post-doctoral fellowship at UW-Madison. He taught as an assistant professor at Duke University from 1954 to 1956. When offered a faculty position he moved back to Madison and to UW-Madison in 1956. Willy retired from teaching in 2006 after teaching physics to undergraduates and graduate students for over fifty years.
The excellence of Willy Haeberli's work as a research physicist was widely recognized. In 1979, he was awarded the T.W. Bonner Prize by the American Physical Society. "...For their unusual contributions to the development and use of ion sources for charged particle accelerators in both basic physics and applied fields." Professor Haeberli was twice appointed to a Humboldt Research Fellowship in Germany. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
"Haeberli gained international distinction for his sixty years of nuclear spin-physics research," said University of North Carolina professor emeritus, Thomas Clegg. "Much of our discipline's scientific progress was built on Haeberli's fundamental ideas and pioneering development of polarized beams and targets."
Professor Haeberli also conducted research at prominent centers in the US and internationally, including the Max Planck institute in Heidelberg, the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, the University of Indiana, the German Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg in Germany, and Brookhaven National Labs. To complement his distinguished career as a scientist, Haeberli was a prolific educator, guiding some forty students to their doctoral theses, as well as more than a dozen students in post-doctoral research.
Haeberli was also well known at UW-Madison as a teacher of undergraduate students. He immensely enjoyed teaching and translating complex ideas of elementary physics into concepts his students could understand. He developed the highly popular "Physics in the Arts" course for undergraduates in the liberal arts.
In 1954, Willy married Heidi Haeberli (also from Basel) and together they had three children, Martin, Paul and Frances. His children enjoyed their dad's fervent passion for cooking and entertaining, hiking, sailing, canoeing and family picnics which often included physics colleagues and students. As a father and grandfather, Willy was always challenging his offspring to physics and science questions at the dinner table, and he enjoyed collaborating with family on puzzles, Ken-Ken and Rummikub games. Throughout his life he loved telling stories and jokes.
Willy married his second wife, Gabriele S. Haberland in 1992. Gaby and Willy were avid art collectors and patrons of the arts in Madison.
Professor Haeberli honored his late wife by establishing (in 2017) the Gabriele Haberland Permanent Collection Fund at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) to support exhibitions, publications, research, and conservation, and (in 2020), funding Tandem Press' Gabriele S. Haberland Printmaking Technology Center, as well as providing scholarships for graduate students in printmaking at the UW-Madison Art Department.
Haeberli is survived by his older sister, Edith Hess; his son, Martin Haeberli (wife, Tracey Grown); their daughters Serena and Eden Grown-Haeberli; his son, Paul Haeberli; his daughter Francie Haeberli (partner, Lewis Gilbert), and her sons Camryn and Dominick Boyle.
A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, June 18th, 2022 in Madison. Please share your memories at www.cressfuneralservice.com.